


Between You and Me

by anawfulybigadventure



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Difference, Canon Universe, F/M, Pregnancy, non-canonical use of genjutsu, some differences with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 08:54:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 61,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19103827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawfulybigadventure/pseuds/anawfulybigadventure
Summary: Shikamaru is nineteen when Asuma dies.Shikamaru/Kurenai in the aftermath of Asuma's death.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from 'Walking in the Wind' by One Direction which helped me shape the ending on this piece. 
> 
> Shikamaru is nineteen and Kurenai is twenty-seven at the beginning, so like if you're uncomfortable don't read. Also, if you're young and impressionable, don't read this as well. The rating here is mostly for you, because there is little explicit sex or violence. 
> 
> Some changes in canon (Kurenai's parents, her team leader, etc).
> 
> To avoid spoilers go to the end notes to see the warnings.
> 
> Also, I didn't want to tag this fic as kid-fic, bc i think it lacks a certain type of kitschiness required for it, so a warning, I guess, for that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To avoid spoilers go to the end notes to see the warnings.

Shikamaru is nineteen when Asuma dies. Kurenai sees how he tries to fill the shoes of his mentor - he picks up smoking, prepares for the jounin test so that he could become the leader of his team, and tries to be there for her and the child, no matter how much Kurenai protests. He is young, he doesn’t need to take the burden of the fatherhood he so desperately wants. She is a high-class jounin, a woman approaching her thirties, she can do it alone. But he still shows up at the clinic for her appointments, carries her grocery bags, shadows her in all her steps and even tries to enter her house.

She doesn’t let him inside because she hasn’t gone mad with the grief.

Kurenai wants to tell him that even Asuma hadn’t bothered with half of these things, trusting her to take good care of herself, but, for some reason, she doesn’t. She and Shikamaru, apart from that first time he gently knocked on her door to tell her the news and watched her go down with tears, don’t talk about Asuma.

It is highly probable that Kurenai should’ve expected the next thing that was going to happen in a nineteen-year old boy grieving, after all she’s noted how he chose to cope with grief - copying Asuma or what he assumed Asuma was, but she was completely unaware and hadn’t noticed the signs that were all there.

When at first, Shikamaru refused to leave her even when she knew Temari was visiting the village, she thought he is simply unprepared to talk to Temari and is embarrassed to show to his first girlfriend his gentle wounded side, maybe he didn’t even know how to talk of his feeling of grief. Then, she thought he only took the responsibility too seriously - the last thing Asuma has asked him to do - to take care of his child, and that’s why he chose to spend the time by her side and not with his girlfriend. It never occurred to her that he’d try to copy Asuma in something like that.

Ino visits one day to water the flowers - Kurenai doesn’t know how much it stems from Shikamaru telling his team to take care of her, or if it's their own desire to be near her, and through her to Asuma’s child, and his legacy, but they visit almost daily, she reluctantly learnt to let Ino in. She tells Kurenai that Shikamaru broke up with Temari, and Kurenai is genuinely baffled why.

But then he is nineteen, and Temari lives far. True, she and Asuma both thought Temari and Shikamaru looked quite solid, but it’s their fault for seeing other’s relationships through theirs - they were both each other’s first partners.

She doesn’t think it is about her. Maybe Asuma’s death played a role, Kurenai thinks, but if it’s so, once Shikamaru passes through the initial hurt, they will get back together. And if they don’t, then, surely, there were other infinite factors that tend to separate people from each other.

When he holds her elbow in the thick crowd and his hand is so gentle on her skin, it feels more like a touch of an air, she thinks he doesn’t know how to touch others. Whenever he stepped too close to her, she thought he is a bit ignorant of the manners.

But she learns Shikamaru better in that time. She never really knew the boy, there were Asuma’s stories of him, but they both were too busy with their own teams to meet each other’s students properly. She knew that he is the same age as her team members, that they studied in the academy together. Her team told her what they knew of Shikamaru, but none of them were close to him, so they knew little.

She is surprised to find Shikamaru a trusted advisor to Hokage, she is surprised that he is at ease with other jounins, especially the Hokage’s guard platoon - Genma pats Shikamaru’s back when he leaves Hokage’s office, Raido talks to him about the strategy and when she meets with Raido late at night, for the answer to her questions, he says that they just learned to obey him, and barely think it’s weird anymore. Iwashi and Genma both were a few years ahead at the Academy with Kurenai, cool upper class men, and before there was Asuma, Kurenai, just like all the girls her age, fancied a tender crush for Genma.

She starts recognizing that Shikamaru has little nervousness to the way he carries himself, and even littler awkwardness to his posture and actions. And she understands that he is being gentle with her.

Which, at first, she is grateful for.

He watches her naked skin being prodded and massaged in the appointment with the doctor, and he is calm and composed. He doesn’t create any kind of awkwardness between them by asking her to touch her swelling belly, she is grateful for it. She, herself, now in this contract with Shikamaru, follows new rules as well - she wears the pants when it is time to go to ultra-sound, so there she only has to push her shirt up. Before she wore dresses. There was nothing Asuma hadn’t seen. Sometimes the doctor would push her pants lower to see something, and whenever Kurenai would look at Shikamaru she found him always disinterestedly looking through the window. She appreciated him having enough sense not to go outside in those moments - as if there could be anything indecent between them.

It is only because he is behaving so appropriately, because he accepts her need for secrecy in all she does, something that was hard even for Asuma, and with it still behaves like the entire village is watching them constantly, behaving appropriately, she learns to rely on his presence.

She learns the truth of something Asuma has told her - he is smart. She learns that he is also gentle, and caring, exceptionally responsible.

She still doesn’t let him in her apartment alone, and she never lets them come at night, but one day it just happens. Team Asuma comes to help her cook the dinner, and she is so tired after her mission that she isn't even conscious when she lets them in. She just sees the full bags of delicious products, and remembers that lately she never had the time to cook for herself, only eating out, and opened the door wide.

They are very funny, their chemistry is different from the chemistry of her own team, more electrified. She thinks she’d be horrified to hear her students talk like that to each other, but it works with their team, Kurenai can almost hear Asuma’s blunt words said by their voices. She laughs like she hasn’t laughed since Asuma left.

When Ino and Chouji leave it seems so natural that Shikamaru offers to wash the dishes, after all, he was the only one who wasn’t cooking, and she does feel tired. She will need to take the maternity leave soon, but she doesn’t want to do it until she will be showing. She isn’t ready to face the world where she isn’t only a widow, but a mother to the fatherless child, she doesn’t want more attention, she doesn’t need any more pity. Only so many people know, almost all of them know because she hadn’t had a choice in telling them. She only told Asuma, and wouldn’t tell anyone else. But then, when Asuma told his family, she knew she had to tell her mother. And when Asuma told Shikamaru, she had to tell her team.

Raido. She remembers that she still hadn’t told him. They started growing apart from each other - Raido had his own new team and new responsibility, protecting Hokage, she and Asuma would often wonder if they somehow drove Raido out of their team, and often promised each other to try to revive their friendship. Right now, with Asuma gone, and their teacher gone for a far longer time, she longs for Raido - the only member alive of her first team.

She doesn’t think she sleeps, but she might’ve dozed off, slumping on the couch, with her swollen feet on the pillow, while she is listening to the steady flush of water and scrub of the dishes, because when Shikamaru appears in front of her, he is closer than she allows him to be.

He sits down in her legs after the mumble he mistakes for permission, he might’ve even asked. Kurenai isn’t too bothered, there’s a lot on her mind - the child, her team, who’ll take them, how to tell Raido, Asuma’s sister invited her for the dinner tomorrow, she’ll need to get a present for Konohomaru, and when she feels the first touch she doesn’t even notice it. Shikamaru must mistake her silence for permission because he takes her feet in his palm, about to massage. She tenses immediately, and awakens from her slumber, bends her feet closer. It is her suddenness that allows her to see the emotions on Shikamaru’s face - his pleasure and tenderness turning to hurt, and only when he notices how hawkishly she watches his face, turns into the polite disinterested mask she is used to seeing. It is her instinct that makes her jump to his mind, uncontrolled, ever since she was a child she used genjutsu so carelessly, sometimes she forgets to control it.

She knows what she’s seeing. She knows what he feels, she rips herself apart from his mind - a mere glance, but with her skill more than enough. She feels betrayed. Worse - she feels Asuma is betrayed.

Who knows what he sees on her face, but he tenses. He should, she is mad. She abruptly stands from the couch, she needs the distance between them.

“How dare you?” - she doesn’t scream, she could never scream, but her voice wavers with emotions.

He doesn’t reply, only looks down, but he doesn’t look ashamed, which makes her feel more angry. He could at least try to deny it. And then, when she thinks about everything this means - she will need to put such distance between them and all after she got used to his presence and learned to depend on it, how could he do it to her?

“Why?..” - she asks, not understanding what she wants to know. His head snaps when he hears her voice laced with hurt.

His eyes widen in alarm, how close is she to tears? She’s seen him with that face.

“I’m sorry,” - his voice is scratchy and because of it is deepened. But compared to her rising panic, he looks offensively calm. She can’t see through it, what does he really feel? She restrains herself from jumping into his mind, though it is hard. Her habitual use of her powers had already caused so much harm.

And is this what he intends to tell her? That he is sorry, that’s it?

How could he do that to Asuma? How could he disrespect Asuma this way, how could he disrespect Asuma’s last wish? If not for that last wish, Kurenai wouldn’t have let him that close to her, but she thought - this is what Asuma wanted, this is what his legacy is meant to be, she was so desperate for even a shadow of Asuma and this is what Shikamaru gave her.

She also knows the other feeling swelling - she despises him for his weakness, for his inability to keep up the lie, because now she will have to cut him off from her life and she thought of him as her friend, and she let him help her, she accepted his help. She doesn’t know why she isn’t mad that he fell for her, only mad that he couldn’t conceal it.

And then, one more thought goes through her - what had he hoped for? It pulses and gains strength and she looks at him in incredulity, as if he admitted that thought out. She thinks of what he hoped for - for her to succumb to his desire? Her mind stretches and her genjutsu is so out of control, Shikamaru must see into her mind.

She says, “You wanted?..” - and she can’t finish the sentence, her voice breaks, but it goes through her head - you wanted to steal Asuma’s legacy? You wanted to let me succumb to your desire and become the only father Asuma’s child would know?

“No,” - he says, hopeless, with shock that she’d think so, as in pain, he shakes his head, he hears her thoughts and he looks young, he is young, - “no, not that…”

But there must’ve been a thought late at night, a delirious dream of what he wanted most. Asuma’s child in his hands, and him in the space near her. Asuma’s places. She almost wants to look to be sure. But with the effort to regain the control of her mind, she doesn’t have the strength to continue, and at last she sees that she is being cruel. He is only nineteen. He must see her pity because he tries to regain the control, he stands, but she sees how much pain she is causing him. He is paled, his eyes tense on her, even if he tries not to, she sees that his eyes beg her of something. She doesn’t jump into his mind, but it is because she controls herself as much as because she is already tired. There is only one thing she can and must and wants to do.

A part of her knows it would be painful for him, and a part of her starts understanding that the boy who only lost his mentor, who faced the grief the first time in his life, barely had the choice in the matter-

He cuts her thoughts out, “Don’t.” His voice is a leash, but he doesn’t hurt her, his harshness is not for her, it is for him. He holds himself like he is an adult, tortured but dignified, and she can’t seem to see the pretence in his posture, but it is there nonetheless, she knows.

“At least don’t think of me as of a child,” - he asks her at last, his last stand, and he doesn’t look like a child in that moment.

The child she pities, but the adult she despises, and she doesn’t want to hate him.

“Leave me,” - she only says tiredly, not knowing what she feels and what she feels for him. Her heart breaks for Asuma’s student, her mind recoils from the man she learned him to be. In her weakness, in her grief, in her state, she can imagine so easily how she could one of the darkest days need something like this - the love of a man, and she punishes him for something that would be her fault only. If she’d seen him only a child, she’d be kinder.

“Yes,” - he says, and he doesn’t cry even though she thinks she hears it in his voice. He doesn’t move, and neither does she. A wild unwelcome thought flashes in her mind - is he going to hug her? Is there to be a kiss - his last farewell? Kurenai can almost feel the tightness of his embrace, a big solid body holding her. She doesn’t think her mind opens on it’s own, whether Shikamaru realizes it or not, he is too focused on her, his chakra surrounds her, he pushes inside her mind because she opened it so wild before, some parts remained there and now they meet, and she knows that he sees that thought in her mind, and she panics, because his mouth slacks, he looks at her with desperation now, and thousand other emotions, and she thinks at him - NO! NO, that isn't what she wants, she thinks in such wildness, trying to explain, but she barely understands herself (it’s been so long since she felt a contact with other human, that’s all this is, that’s all she wants), and she must panic loud enough in his mind, that he is forced to lift his hands up in surrender, he says, “Of course, I understand, of course it isn’t...” his voice calm, or something pretending to be calm.

“Just leave,” - she begs him now. - “Please, just…”

She looks at him, and he nods, and turns around, obeying this time instantly. At first she thinks he left, how can a person leave so suddenly,but then she hears him near the front door. Of course he can’t leave that quickly - he’ll need to get his shoes, to open the door, but he is a ninja, in the next moment, he’ll disappear.

She follows the sounds and sees him fighting her door, once he’ll leave she will never see him again.

Is this it? Their months of life shared ending just like that? She never even thanked him, and she was so thankful.

He opens up the door, and she steps towards him. He freezes like a deer in the headlights, and she freezes, too, the way he looks at her makes this moment more important than she is ready to make it. She wanted to thank him, she wanted to pat his shoulder, maybe even hug him, it seemed so natural just a breath before, and now it’s not.

“Goodbye,” - she says, feeling pain.

His face is pale, and his mouth twitches, but he says nothing, and she closes the door.

He is Asuma’s student, she screams at herself. And then, more petrified her mind screams at her - Asuma, Asuma, Asuma! She drops her head to her door, hoping that Shikamaru is not on the other side of it. What was the madness that made her think that?

Right now, when he isn’t here, it is easy to forget that madness. How could there ever be anyone she’d want to kiss if he’s not Asuma?

She goes to sleep, not wanting to think and think and think of what happened today. Her last thought is actually the calm one, surely born because her emotions subsided, but she feels bad he’s never going to be near her again.

  

* * *

  

The next day Ino and Chouji both come to her. It annoys her that he manipulates them so well, they don’t suspect anything - she makes sure of that. The message is clear - they are to replace him, now she can use and rely on their help.

Their presence is loud, especially compared to him, but today she welcomes them both, it is nice not to have the space to think. Ino easily and unprompted shares with her the gossips of their age group, and Kurenai finds herself absolutely fascinated. Usually, girls like Ino weren’t paying attention to her in school, but she always admired them from afar, so even if her presence is just on this side of being too buzzing, she listens carefully. She was much more like Hinata, and wasn’t at all surprised when Hinata told her she hasn’t talked that much to Ino or Sakura even though they studied together.

Sometimes, Kiba reminded her of Asuma, especially as he was when they were first assigned to one team. She is glad Hinata has somebody like Kiba because their quietness can become a bit lonely. She wasn’t surprised to learn that Hinata fell for Naruto - with their mild-mannered tempers they needed someone bright and warm in their lives.

She is very happy with her team, amongst other reasons because she doesn’t think she’d be able to handle anyone else. Her students are the only three she can imagine befriending if she was same age with them - quiet, observant and responsible Shino, kind and good and generous with his affection Kiba, and Hinata who reminds her so much of herself.

She’s watched Asuma’s team from afar, and secretly was glad she wasn’t assigned to mentor them. They were everything she hid away from in the academy - even Chouji could lose his temper, and Ino and Shikamaru never even tried to be acting respectfully towards other team members or Asuma. Ino spit venom as she breathed, and Shikamaru was unimpressed even with Hokage.

She knows that all three have known each other from the earliest times, and that is why their team chemistry is that different from her team - almost siblings, they know each other better than themselves. Kurenai is the only child of a single mother, she can barely understand such dynamic.

Asuma was good with them. He's had a huge family, and all his family members are loud and outgoing. Kurenai thought he was the absolute best choice for this team - he could join their banter, and with his good-humour smooth out harshness of their spats. She’s seen how much they all loved him, and knew how much Asuma cared for all of them. And she knows that these two are welcoming her so easily precisely because they see her connection to Asuma. But then it is easy for her to give in to their chit-chat for the same reason.

They walk her to the doctor’s appointment, and then leave her for the hospital, saying they are going to help her with the groceries. She pushes the money into Ino’s hand, and is relieved when she doesn’t refuse. Shikamaru was spending all his money on her, and it humiliated her even if she knew that he took the adult missions but still lived with his parents, and so, probably, had more to spare than her.

Thinking of Shikamaru so carelessly spikes her humiliation, she needs to only be focused on her child, on Asuma’s child.

But she was always so sensitive to fits of embarrassments, and right now the past night’s emotionality near cripples her.

She knows, that with her sensitivity, she is now to spend entire day simply reliving the scene of yesterday, be unfree from it, but at the doctor’s appointment the ultra-sound reveals the gender of the baby, and it evaporates everything else.

Funny, how thinking of the creature inside her as a girl, makes her state more real. For all Shikamaru’s fuss, Asuma’s last wish, she barely felt herself changed, but this small bit of information makes her understand them a little more - she is not only herself anymore.

She wishes there’d be someone there with her when she learns, but as it is it’s only the physician who shares her joy.

Kurenai almost looks forward to Sarutobi residency visit. She’ll be able to tell her sister-in-law the news, but when the evening comes, she still dreads it, same as she did before all the other times she was invited.

It was easier with Asuma, but still something that, for her, had to be endured - Asuma’s loud family, she loved that quality in him, but with his family - Hiruzen was still alive, his guards were always welcomed to the dinners, her sister-in-law, her husband and their respective teams, Konohomaru with his friends, that was just too much. She and Raido, both uncomfortable amongst so many people, would just hide somewhere. But then they grew, and Kurenai had to learn that to disappear would be a portrayal of bad manners, and Raido excused himself so often because of his new responsibilities, at some point he was no longer invited.

She remembers with such vividness the places she and Raido would disappear to in Sarutobi's residence. To them, both from poor families, the house seemed enormous. She learned to love the traditional-styled residencies in those hidden moments with Raido.

Why had they stopped inviting him? He could’ve been free to decline, but they still had to make an effort, both - she and Asuma.

She doesn’t know where Raido lives. She is petrified of it - how could they? How could she not know? She meets him weekly, the arrangement that was alive with Asuma, too. But only an evening per week is not enough to be familiar with each other’s lives.

It seems so selfish to only reach Raido now, when Asuma’s gone, but she can’t do anything about the past.

She and Asuma loved each other so that they barely noticed anything else, there was work, but apart from it, they were secluded. Or, she was secluded, Asuma was too social to be living inside her bubble, but he tried to fit there. When they were children, he’d tried to open her up and introduced her to all his numerous friends, and would try, from time to time, to open her shell even in the later years. But she felt comfortable by herself, and once Asuma turned to be in love with her as well, she barely felt the need for any kind of external socialisation, Asuma was a man bigger than the life, and he filled her social life to her extent. He might’ve needed something more than the life she was building with him, but her comfort was more important to him than his desires, he loved her, as he did everything, just on this side of too-much, definitely more than she deserved, because she learned to accept their life that was to attuned to her needs, and not exactly to his.

She is glad now, when she has the knowledge that he dies so young, that she’s been able to monopolize him, that there’s been so many years of them as if alone in the world, she feels the gratitude for herself. But she feels like she stole him a little bit from the world. And, maybe, above all else, from his family and from Raido.

She goes to Hokage’s building, Tsunade wanted to speak with her about her maternity leave, but she is also looking forward to seeing Raido there. She sees him with his team and approaches them.

“Kurenai,” - he smiles.

“Raido,” - she breathes warmly. As she comes closer and greets the rest of his team with a bow, she notices Shikamaru sitting in front of them on the couch. He’s been hidden by the standing people.

She tries not to show it - not to show anything, but she feels such ice-water shock, she can’t help jerking in her steps, and loses the balance. Iwashi and Genma on her sides both move to stabilise her, and she leans heavily on their hands. Shikamaru’s eyes look sharply at her, they are the only ones here who knows how dangerous it is for her to even, mundanely, fall. She doesn’t know what she is seeing in his eyes, they are dark and narrowed, he looks mad, but, Kurenai feels it in his chakra, he is only tense. He has dark circles under his eyes. He looks terrible, she notes it, once she regains the balance and stops her heart from hammering. Shikamaru turns away, and hides his face in the shadow.

Raido shrugs his shoulders when she looks at him, she understands that he tries to apologize for, what he views, disrespect in a lower rank. He offers his thought to her freely, like he did it when they were in the same team, and it is so easy for Kurenai to attune to him and hear, 'woke up on the wrong foot,' as explanation.

She tries to smile, but is grateful when Iwashi asks her, “You're here to see Hokage?”

“That too,” - she answers, and sends her thought to Raido - 'you free after?'

He nods, and smiles, and walks her to Hokage’s office. She can’t help it, and places her hand in parting on his sleeve as thanks. He did nothing, but his presence alone, his friendliness and kindness for her made her feel so good. He touches her palm on his elbow, understanding, and they part.

  

* * *

 

“Let’s find a place to sit,” - she says after he agrees to go with her to Sarutobi’s dinner. They are passing through the park, the flowers bloom wildly, their smell pressing forward. When he looks at her questionably, she explains, - “There’s something I have to tell you.”

When she is done, she seeks his face for any sign of betrayal, but she doesn’t see it. Asuma died so recently, and that is why he is striving to be that kind for her. Or have they separated so completely from each other that Raido feels nothing about being told the news of her life only after her students, or even Asuma’s family? At one point, all three of them were all but attached to each other, there was nothing they hadn’t known of each other, and it was hard to tell where one ended and another begun. Kurenai thinks that this is precisely the reason why it was then so easy for her to fall into relationship with Asuma, it was so natural, she couldn’t have done it, if they hadn’t had this connection before their romantic partnership.

“What would our teacher think?” - Raido smiles when he tells her of something she hadn’t thought of.

“What would he think?” - she asks, suddenly nervous, desperate for Raido’s answer, but could he know the answer?

“He always cheered for you and Asuma both, you know it,” - Raido places his warm hand on her shoulder.

It is soon to be anniversary of his death. She doesn’t need to say it out loud, they both think of it all the same.

She smiles at Raido, so grateful. The day dies, the colours around them change into world of illusions, the sky is painted with the evening sun.

“Let’s go visit Sarutobis,” - she says after them breathing in the full air of the day, after listening to the nature’s sounds.

“There’s fewer of them now, it should be easier,” - Raido drops, and Kurenai looks at him, scandalized, but already ready to laugh. No one tried to joke about that yet, she’s sure of it.

“Don’t hope on it,” - she warns.

  

* * *

  

Kurenai doesn’t think her relationship with Asuma’s sister were ever good. Behind the mask of politeness, she knew that her sister-in-law always wondered what Asuma’s seen in her. Compared to Sarutobis, Kurenai is quite bleak. In the family of Third Hokage the will of the fire are the words that had to be taken literally, and their tempers were, accordingly, all fiery. Kurenai, with the power of genjutsu around her - the power that is almost dreamy, didn’t exactly fit in. But when Hiruzen was alive, his daughter respected him enough to mirror his kindness for her, and it was almost pleasant - this almost friendship. If anyone asked her at the time what were her relationships with Asuma’s family, she’d say that they are all very kind to her, and wouldn’t lie.

When Hiruzen died, there appeared a certain tension between Asuma and his sister, as of who'd be the new leader of the family. They hadn’t had bad relationships, ever, they were only both very hot-tempered. Kurenai sometimes thought that Asuma’s sister thought that all the qualities she disliked in her brother were there because of Kurenai, and so it was Kurenai who had to bear the quiet irritation after their fights. Had Kurenai not been as attentive as she was with the brain-waves, she might’ve not even noticed it, but she was always very sensitive to the moods of people around her.

The worst, expectedly, happened after Asuma’s death. Kurenai’s quiet grief didn’t make sense to her sister-in-law. She’s heard the thought - 'If it was Asuma who survived, he’d cry, drink, pick fights, destroy half the village and at the end die in some dark alley', and Kurenai would gladly never see her again.

If only in that time she would’ve been free not to see her dearest sister. But, there was Asuma’s will. He left all he owned, everything he’s had to Kurenai. That was it, that was the will.

It was so like him - to make this beautiful, overflowing gesture, and never think any details through. As Kurenai learned in that time, when she only wanted to be left alone to grieve and instead had to dive into the bureaucracy, Sarutobi residency only passed to the first son of the family. Asuma’s sister lived there all her life and Konohomaru knew no other home.

Of course, Kurenai agreed to sign the papers giving the rights to the residency to her sister-in-law, it was in her name, it was her father’s home, and her ancestors before that. She did it all for free, absolutely terrified by the prospect that her in-laws might think that this was her grand scheme - she, a girl from such poor family, at last got a beautiful home, or that she, in any kind of way knew about what Asuma had planned to do, and hadn’t stopped him.

Sometimes, she wondered what Asuma wanted to happen when he wrote that will. Did he want for her to live with his family in his ancestral home? How he’d imagine that going? Kurenai, what, would live in his childhood room and wake up in the morning to his sister making her breakfast? All the while Konohomaru and his friends will be running and screaming and playing all around her? He must’ve known this isn’t what she’d want.

It is highly probable, he hadn’t thought of anything. He used to think in broad strokes, loved her to such fervent degree, he in all truth simply forgot his sister or nephew.

He’s had little money saved, and they mostly covered his funeral. After such great will, after such great portrayal of love, he left her nothing but the child.

And she loves him for it. She wasn’t there for the money, and was relieved not to earn anything with his death, better to be inconvenienced, she thought, she wouldn’t want to be benefitted from his death. He loved her with all his might all his life, there was nothing she had to receive after his death.

The dinner passes and Kurenai can’t find the right moment to share the news that she’s learned today. At the end, when she and Raido stand outside, listening to the crickets, under the sky of thousand stars, she thinks that it is for the best. She doesn’t want to tell, not yet. It hadn’t felt as right as when she told Raido.

With a wistfulness, she realizes that she wants to tell it to Shikamaru. But that is expected - he’s been with her in all the appointments, and only missed one. The important one, she thinks. Maybe, not to a nineteen-year old boy, who should have something else going in his life.

“Hokage talks about jounin’s tests,” - she half-asks Raido. He nods.

“Heard of it,” - he looks gloom. - “With the war approaching…”

The war approaching? Not again. Shikamaru told her of their fight with Hidan and Kakuzu. He was full of sureness that this is what she wanted, but she’d been petrified. He and his team could die, and it was a miracle none of them did. And there are far more dangerous Akatsuki. She breathes out in worry. She talked to Hokage about her maternity leave, trusting the greatest medic to know the best time, and Tsunade told her, “In all rightfulness, I should force you to go on one right this moment, but we don’t have enough jounins of your rank for me to dismiss you, I’m sorry, Kurenai.”

Hokage told her she’d try to give her the safer missions, such as overlooking the jounin tests. It felt good to be needed and valued, but Kurenai still worried for the child, all that was left of Asuma, and was relieved to have been assigned that task, and relieved for her team, too. She didn’t want them fighting Akatsuki just yet, they could get stronger, and with jounin tests approaching, that’s exactly what they could focus on.

“She apologized to me, can you imagine?” - she tells Raido suddenly. He laughs.

“I mean she was basically a dragon when I came inside, I thought any moment I might fly out of the window, so it wasn’t undeserved” - their leader has never had a sweet temper, but Kurenai has never seen her like that.

“Yes, it’s all Shikamaru. He made us all want to jump out our skins today, don’t know what’s with him, he’s usually too lazy to be bothered. He picked a huge fight with Hokage, and usually he’s the right one, but today he was just picking at everyone’s sore spots,” - Raido explains. And then, because he sees her face closing, adds, - “But he is actually really cool,” thinking that she knows little of him and will judge him on his bad day behaviour.

“Yes,” - Kurenai says, forcing the word out.

  

* * *

 

It might not be her best idea to go visit her mother when she is exhausted after long hours of work - so much has to be done for the exam, and with her starting to train her students, she barely has the time to settle back in her bones. But she likes it. She’s asked for it. Tsunade gave her one of the easiest jobs, warning her not to overwork herself, but Kurenai wants distraction, she’s had enough time to grief, she needs to start pulling herself out of her sea of sorrows. Loss of Asuma has been such a constant thing on her mind, such chronic ache inside her, such emptiness of her life, it is nice to have the mind be filled with something else. Then, there’s also her child, and her unease about Shikamaru. He disappeared. Their village is too small for her to simply stop seeing him, so it means he is avoiding her, which might be for the best, but it still makes her feel worried and guilty.

So, yes, it is nice to have such demanding work.

Ino approached her today and asked to train her before the jounin tests. Kurenai couldn’t say no. She asked Ino whether Shikamaru and Chouji are preparing for the exam, and she said they are. Kurenai almost felt the need to take them for her pupils as well, how will they prepare without jounin teaching them the jounin-level techniques? Ino told her that those two went to train under Kakashi, team 7 under Yamato is busy with their own mission, so he is quite free. Kurenai wondered why Ino hadn’t wanted to train under Kakashi, too, and Ino explained to her that she wants to take the lessons from both of them. Kurenai didn’t know whether to be offended or impressed, but Asuma loved that shameless side of Ino so much, Kurenai starts to understand it’s appeal.

Her mother’s house is a simple two-stories house. At the first floor there is the tofu shop her mother set when they two first settled in Konoha almost twenty years ago. That was all the shop did - it sold tofu, the second floor had their small rooms. In the summer such small places were heating up so much, and also smelled the way old building tend to do, not to mention the constant smell of tofu, Kurenai had to spend all her time outside.

Right now, when she enters her home through the shop the familiar smells take her back to her childhood, it is almost surprising to see her mother with wrinkles and greying hair.

Her mother was beautiful in Kurenai’s childhood, or so it seemed to Kurenai. She loved her mother, but she could never say if her mother ever loved her.

Kurenai remembers her being aloof in her childhood, as she is now, moving automatically. The world, it seemed, was hidden behind the veil for her, the sounds carried only meaning and not the music. She was harsh in her care, but she provided it.

She was never strict, or cruel to Kurenai, and took care of her - dutifully ironing her shirts and sewing her torn dresses, and in the years that she’s spent in this world observing the families, she knew there could be families much much worse, and never felt the need to complain.

In her adult years, she played with the puzzle of her family, and the facts that before seemed to be unrelated and random, suddenly all fit together in the grim picture that eased whatever dissatisfaction she’s had with her mother.

Kurenai, as her mother told her, was born during the war. Kurenai calculated her mother to be seventeen at the time of her birth, even though she always looked older than her age. Her mother never said her father’s name and refused to say how they met, only mentioned one thing when Kurenai approached puberty - that she looks a lot like him, and that she’s has the same eyes. Her mother never said anything about any other members of her family, and never talked of her childhood, but Kurenai knew that from her birth to the time that she was six, she and her mother walked one town after the other, her mother selling home-made tofu or hand-knitted pieces of clothes, and, even, though her mother refused it, Kurenai remembered them begging for money in the rain.

It's hard to be sad for her mother’s lack of love after understanding all those details of her birth.

Her childhood was isolated - she barely had friends or knew how to make them, she hadn't known she is supposed to have them at all even, and though her mother was present, she was away from her all the same. But she never felt sad about her life when she was a child, and, being adult, she learned to find a certain romanticism in it.

What was hard was not the isolation, it was her futile attempts to break from it. Kurenai tried and tried to give love to her mother, but it was always such a weird thing because her mother had a very narrow definition of what it means for Kurenai to be good, and to fit it often would mean to chip away some parts of her.

She hadn’t had arguments with her, both she and her mother were too sensitive to handle something like that, but there were periods of tensions, more often in the later years, with her getting higher and higher ranks, with her living with Asuma, that hurt Kurenai quite a lot.

It seemed to her, in those moments, that she is still connected to her mother by the umbilical cord, that they never really separated, and she feared that she simply hadn’t gotten something that all other people received from their parents that gave them the strength to cut themselves away from their parents, and she will forever be tied out from to her mother, eternally hurt from disappointing her, or, a more terrifying prospect, one day she’ll have no strength to fight that pull of her mother, and will become someone her mother could respect.

She sits down to drink the tea after the dinner, her mother’s food is never tasty, but the tea is usually good. The smell of jasmine infiltrates the small room, and she tells her mother the details of her house-hunting.

Her little apartment is not suited for a child, but selling it gave her little money. Even with her savings there are very few houses she can afford.

She wants the child to have space growing up. Even she’s had that much. She might find a bigger apartment, but in her memories, for her own childhood, it was so important to have an easy access to the freedom beneath the walls. She doesn’t want the child to grow up entrapped in stony box. The child needs at least a garden, like her garden behind this house where she watched the hairy centipedes eat the leaves. When she’s seen Sarutobi’s residency, of course, she imagined how happy her child would be to have that much space, but then she also imagined the child would have a happier childhood than hers - having a caring and loving father, so now there’s no point in berating the circumstances, she can only accept them.

“Then live with me,” - her mother says. Kurenai knows that this is why she in part came here, that’s what she planned to do. Not only because of the house, she thinks that for the sake of her independency she could brave the apartment, but because she thinks she will need help with the child, because she hasn’t only lost the chance to raise the child in Asuma’s house, she’s lost Asuma. If she is to have at least a show of strength before Shikamaru to prove that she can do it even without him, she needs to swallow her pride and admit that it’d be better for baby to be raised with some help.

Kurenai doesn’t agree right this moment, promises to think, but she only stalls the time, hoping that something would happen in the few months to come, but she knows she’ll move back with her mother. It shouldn’t feel like defeat, but it does.

Kurenai thinks that this connection between them will never tear, and so she will always come back to her mother, and she can’t see herself ever escaping it, and maybe this is something she needs to accept, too.

“His Godfather came by,” - her mother nods at her belly. She started showing, but she can hide it now.

“Godfather?” - Kurenai is lost by the change of topic. Her mother isn’t the one for the useless talk, so she just waits for Kurenai to understand. And then it dawns on her, - “Shikamaru?”

She’s told her mother about the promise Asuma made one of his students take. Her mother has seen them both walking out of the hospital once or twice, and so her mother knows the student.

“Funny boy,” - her mother says.

Kurenai touches her head where the headache is starting. The room is too small, it doesn’t have enough air. “He is.”

“Wanted to give me money.”

“You hadn’t accepted?” - Kurenai asks immediately.

“Of course I hadn't!” - her mother looks at her incredulous, and Kurenai breathes out in relief. She can trust her mother’s pride. Kurenai can just imagine how dignified it would be if she tried to talk to Shikamaru about returning the money.

“Asked about the child, what I know, what I don’t. He’s said you probably know the gender of the child,” - her mother takes a pause.

“It’s a girl, Mama.”

“Alright,” - her mother nods and then takes the cups with the finished tea and moves to the counter to wash them, the talk is done, her mother’s said everything she wanted to say and asked all she wanted to know.

Kurenai doesn’t want to ask about Shikamaru.

She wonders if she should go home now, it’d be a relief. Her last months by herself.

“It’s nice to think that this child already has made connections with people in this world,” - her mother says, voice without emotion.

Kurenai doesn’t know what to think of that, she’s never thought her mother is the one for reflections.

But it is her mother’s words that pierce at long last the thought she kept at bay - she hadn’t just stopped her relationships with Shikamaru, she has stolen something from her child - Shikamaru was meant to be a meaningful figure in her daughter’s life, he already was. That child had already been stolen a father, and now for Kurenai so selfishly, while thinking only of her own comfort, to decide to cut out the man Asuma hoped to replace him?

But Asuma isn’t here, what does this dead man know?

Her mother notices her sudden tension, Kurenai understands it in retrospect, though not right there. Kurenai gets lost for the rest of the evening in the dilemma of being owed to both Shikamaru and Asuma, of not knowing the right choice to make.

As Kurenai leaves, her mother says, “Kurenai, you need to learn to stabilize your emotions, at least for the sake of your child. You can’t let your skittishness and pride to go unchecked when you’ll become as mother.”

Kurenai flushes, and what’s worse is that she doesn’t understand where this particular lecture came from. She says, “Bye, Mama,” and leaves without acknowledging those last words.

Later, she understands, at least a little. Her mother has always considered her periods of quietness to be coming from pridefulness, that she was full of arrogance and malice when she was only absent in the dialogue. When Kurenai started living with Asuma, her mother watched them two interacting, and even said that it is nice to see Kurenai to be growing morally good, that Asuma was good for her.

Her mother’s words, as they tend to do, haunt her, and they will continue do so, she knows. She craves to be free from that power of her mother. It is so easy to shake off anyone else’s assessment of her - ever since she became an adult, she realized that other people simply cannot even perceive the world the way she sees it, same observation anyone entering adulthood must make. But never her mother’s. And whenever her mother showed her that she viewed Kurenai to be arrogantly prideful, morally lousy it hurt.

Kurenai wishes to be free of her mother, but how can she? Even if she were to disregard everything she owed to her mother through the penniless childhood, following such silly advice of other people who faced that problem - simply cut the people out of your life, like there aren't any moral repercussions to such actions, like there isn’t something more than the comfort of only stimulating the loving and caring relationships, she wasn’t free because of money, because of the unfortunate circumstances of her life - she needs help raising a child, she’ll need to work when Mirai will be three, who will she leave her with? She wants a house for her child, she wants some protection for her daughter, should anything happen to her.

But still, dark in the night, Kurenai places her head onto the cold wall of the street to cool it off, and breathes in and out, 'Let me be free, Mama, let me be free.'

  

* * *

 

It is a tradition, of a kind, for Kurenai to visit Hyuga residency before big moments in Hinata’s life. She always asks Hiashi’s blessing for Hinata’s sake. Preparations for exam are done, the guests from other countries are flooding the village, it is all about to begin.

“Hinata will participate in jounin exams,” - she says from her traditional pose. Usually, she would bow while waiting for the blessing, but a blessing of other kind disables her to do that. Even traditional pose is hard for her to maintain, but she endures.

“Yes, thank you, Kurenai,” - there is little warmth, same as it was years ago, but there is some kind of respect in his words. - “Do you think my daughter will pass the exam?”

Kurenai thinks how to answer. She hopes for all her students to pass, and thinks they worked hard to achieve it. She can’t quite separate herself wanting for them to pass from her confidence in their abilities and her unbiased view of them she’ll need to assume once the exams begin.

“She trained hard, and is at her strongest. There are always strokes of luck working in favour of some and against others. But I think your daughter is ready to become a jounin. If it doesn’t happen this year, then, surely, next,” - she replies.

Not all her students will be able to become jounins, she knows that. She isn’t the one to close them the way, but she knows that at some point she’ll have to suggest to her students that a chuunin rank is a highly respectable achievement. She doesn’t know whether Kiba or Shino have the power inside themselves to be jounins.

But Hinata does. She is the only one of her students of whom Kurenai can say with confidence that, if she wants it, one day she will become jounin. It is barely by her teaching, and, in fact, barely by Hinata herself. Kurenai can’t say that HInata is more hard-working or more intelligent student than her team members. She thinks in her team, they all try their best, and are equal in their efforts. But Hinata is a Hyuga, and Kurenai learned that respectable clans do deserve their high status. Byakugan and other Hyuga techniques, and even chakra’s nature place Hinata a head higher than an average ninja. She knows the truth of her words - if not this year, then, surely, next Hinata will become jounin.

She is invited to dinner. Kurenai, after all these years got a bit accustomed to the grandeur of Hyuga’s lives, to the people jumping to serve her. It is a dream to live like a princess, but Kurenai finds the reality of such life terrifying.

But the residency is beautiful. It is enormous, far too big than a family needs, but one of the most beautiful places Kurenai has ever been to. She wouldn’t want to live here, but to walk it like a museum, she would enjoy.

Hinata must sense her wistfulness, or maybe she only looks for a reason to be with her teacher, worried before the exams, but she suggests to show Kurenai the house, and Kurenai agrees. Between preparing for the test, she’s had little time for her students, and when she did, the hours were spent in long trainings and learnings of jutsu. But today was the last day of training, they will rest all day tomorrow to be at their best for the exam.

Kurenai appreciates the water fountains, and the balance of gardens. The garden in her childhood home doesn’t deserve to be called same name as those exquisite art pieces of nature. Hers was much more untamed, but she likes the nature wild. That’s what this residency isn't - too meticulous to her liking. How to breathe when everything in the rooms, from their colours to the placement of smallest objects is measured to be perfect? She is glad Hinata grew to be such a normal girl, such perfection could make a person go mad.

Hinata walks her to her room and opens the doors wide - the blue moonlight, the soft drip of water, Kurenai is sure she’d remember a poem that is appropriate, but it’s been too long since she read poems.

“Are you afraid, Hinata?” - she asks when they sit down to watch the garden.

Hinata shakes her head. Kurenai is surprised, she thinks Hinata should be afraid. Jounin test is far more dangerous than the chuunin one, it’s not uncommon for participators to die.

“There will be war,” - Hinata says, as if explaining. Kurenai looks into her student’s peculiar beautiful eyes and thinks that her student is right. Why to be afraid of the test in the face of the war.

She is so grown, but Kurenai still looks at her and sees the same child she’s taken under her wing almost six years back. She threads her fingers through HInata’s smooth dark hair. She is beautiful, but in the same way, it seems to Kurenai, that this garden is - any disgraceful moment might destroy it. Impulsively, she kisses Hinata’s forehead, trying to convey just how much she’d like to protect her.

How to protect them? How to protect all of them?

Silly thought, but she entertains it while she and Hinata settle in silence - what would happen to her students if she died?

If only Asuma was alive for such future.

She looks at Hinata and thinks - if Asuma was alive, and Kurenai was dead instead, would he think of kissing Hinata? And it is so absurd, so abnormal to even contemplate with seriousness. Then why has she taken her own argument with Shikamaru that seriously?

Shikamaru copied Asuma so well in his grief, he confused even her, that’s all that was, that’s all it could’ve been. She’s been desperate even for Asuma’s shadow, and that’s what Shikamaru became, what he bore inside of him. How ridiculous to think she needed to push him out, for nothing more than a shadow.

  

* * *

 

Today is the first day that brings some promise of an autumn, the day is cold and cloudy. Tests begin tomorrow, but today she has something more important to do.

Today is her teacher's death anniversary. He had been the best teacher Kurenai ever had in her life, before or after, but he left them alone when they were so young, barely a year since the team was formed. And it was even more remarkable just how much a man could give them in such a short time, how much he taught them.

His tomb is located on the hill, away from other graves. There is a tree there, and she sees the figure standing there beneath it. She knew he’d be here. Raido will come soon, too. Just a year ago, it’s been four of them, she came here with Asuma.

She begins her climb, the wind is blowing and whistling. She doesn’t realize there are two people on the hill or hear what they talk about because of the wind. But as soon as it becomes too late to step back, she sees Shikamaru underneath the tree’s shadow. Their eyes meet. He pales, but she feels heat on her face.

Kakashi pauses in his talk to greet her. It is hard to surprise him, he is his father’s son.

Shikamaru’s eyes track down to her figure. She can’t hide her pregnancy anymore. She feels the thought almost jumping of him, but he restrains his mind block before she has the time to capture it.

Kakashi says something, but she doesn’t hear it, she is far enough for wind to steal the sounds, about forty steps away from them, she sees Shikamaru tensely saying next words. Kurenai stops to look at the view from the hill, giving them the space. She wonders if the dot far is Raido and reluctantly lifts her hand to wave.

She can’t quite see if the dot waves back because she feels her elbow airily touched. She jerks because she knows it is Shikamaru. He looks at her, it’s been so long. He sends the thought, rather than asking - 'Can we talk of something?', she feels him also sending her the explanation that it would only take a second, and that it is about work.

She agrees, they walk a bit to the left, but she has the time to recognize Raido. Well, she isn’t afraid that either he or Kakashi would eavesdrop, they would never.

As soon as they step away from the sight, Shikamaru asks her, harshly, eager to be done with it and run from her.

“If you want I can forfeit from the exam this year.”

Which isn’t what she expected. “What do you mean?”

And then she understands - he tries to disappear from her sight as much as he can.

“I only just learned that you are one of the judges,” - he explains, and he looks to the left and not on her.

How ridiculous, she thinks.

“Of course, I’d like to see you,” - she places her hand on his shoulder, but retreats when he jerks from her touch.

She’s been too cruel to him. This entire split between them doesn’t make any sense at this point, it's a long over-due since they forgot all about it. She is sure he's forgotten all about his phantom feelings for her, too.

She wants to say it to Shikamaru, to talk to him about her child, to fall into their comfortable routine again, but she restrains herself - he has a very important exam tomorrow, he should be focused on it, and not on anything else.

But he sees how she opens her mouth and then clothes, and hesitates on the spot. She smiles, trying to at least that way convey that she never wanted him to decide not to participate because of her.

She can feel that he wants to tell her something else, has felt this thought around him since he first looked at her. And, at long last, he gives in. She thinks he simply can’t hold any type of tension inside him, too lazy to fight. She feels the thought - 'You look beautiful' escaping him at the same time that he says, “Pregnancy looks good on you.”

“Thank you,” - she says to both phrases.

His eyes stay on her even as he says polite goodbye and makes small steps to leave. Kurenai thinks that he feels her change, but hopes that it wouldn’t distract him from the exam.

“Good luck tomorrow,” - she says at last.

“Yes,” - he averts his eyes from her. She turns to join Raido and Kakashi on the grave of her teacher - Sakumo Hatake, the white fang.

  

* * *

 

Kurenai thinks that she’s never seen such intense jounin test, and they usually are intense. All countries are preparing the warriors for the upcoming move of Akatsuki, and it shows. The week of the tests requires her assistance long hours of the day, and most of the nights, Tsunade screams at her to sleep, and threatens to fire, but Kurenai feels healthy, and her baby kicks in excitement and Kurenai sleeps irregularly whenever she can.

And, then, as sudden as they begun, the exams are done. Team Kurenai has no new jounins, but they all are alive. Team Kakashi hadn’t come in time to participate, so no new jounins, too. Team Asuma comes victorious - no members killed, and one new jounin.

Ino demands her to be on her birthday/celebration of her new rank. Her vixen strategy of studying under both her and Kakashi proved to be victorious, and she is the only student her age who becomes a jounin.

Kurenai despairs a little - she hoped to rest after demanding week, her maternity leave has begun and she intends to rest, but she goes obediently to pick a present, and comes in time to the forest.

It is overwhelming, and very Ino - the forest looks like a faerie court, the party is screaming the luxury of Yamanaka clan, and it seems to Kurenai that the entire village had been invited. She gives Ino the present, eats dutifully the cake, and disappears looking for a quiet place.

On the wild moor hidden in the trees she hopes to be alone and regain herself a little before going back, saying farewell to Ino and leaving for her home. Tomorrow she starts moving into her mother’s house. Today would be her last night in her own place.

She isn’t alone, she sees, but she recognizes the figure before she turns back.

Kurenai doesn’t know if he recognized her chakra and lets her come closer, or he’s too tired after the final fights, but he doesn’t acknowledge her. She walks loud enough for him to hear.

She sits down next to him, slowly because of her state. The night is autumn cold, and it’s pleasant.

She waits for him to say something, because she doesn’t know what to say. He isn’t running away from her - that’s good.

Shikamaru is laying with his eyes closed, but he isn’t sleeping.

“Where’s my birthday present?” - at long last he draws, he is yet to open his eyes.

And. Shit. Asuma told her that two of his students were born with a day difference so they celebrate birthdays together. That’s why the celebration is happening in the forest - she’d been surprised about the location, but now understands that this must be the famed Nara forests.

Kurenai thinks. Her daughter kicks inside, giving her the idea. Before, she’d consider this too inappropriate, but this time she reminds herself that Shikamaru has his own connection to his daughter into which she shouldn’t entangle.

She takes his hand, and even for that simple movement she has to fight herself, reminding herself that this is normal. It is only the isolation of her life that made her so sensitive, and not the reality of the situation.

Shikamaru opens his eyes in shock - he must understand what she intends to do. She places his hand right where a moment before she felt the kick. Shikamaru sits and looks at his hand and at her belly, he doesn’t let her see any emotions on it and for that she is grateful, she is embarrassed already. Why would she think that qualifies as the birthday present, she doesn’t know, she must be becoming one of these mothers who think it is a blessing for anyone in the world to hear about their child.

There is no movement inside, and Kurenai feels stupid, until she feels Shikamaru’s hand pressing into her skin. It must be the first pregnant belly he’s touched in his life.

Before she has the time to change her mind and be petrified of herself, she says, “Place both your hands.”

His eyes flicker at her face, but she doesn’t notice any nervousness of reluctance in him. If she did, she’d have to leave. This isn’t anything Asuma would’ve disapproved of, she reminds herself. If Asuma stood here, he’d tell Shikamaru to feel the touch, too.

She positions herself more comfortable under his hands, standing on her knees facing him. And then, she feels the weird flutter inside, and takes Shikamaru’s hand to move where she knows her daughter is about to move. He feels it, she can tell by his pressing fingers. Thankfully, he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t use this moment of pure wonder for them to connect, and she moves away from his hands in the next breath of autumn wind.

They settle comfortably, and the silence can be full camaraderie. That’s what they are - two people who are sharing one responsibility, there might as well be comfort in their relationship while they walk the journey they will have to walk.

“Did you get back together with Temari?” - she asks. Temari came with Kankuro to watch over Suna candidates.

“Yes.”

Good. Just like she thought - he and Temari are good for each other. It was only a little madness after Asuma’s death.

“Let’s forget it,” - she says. She doesn’t need to explain, doesn’t need to send her memory to him of what she means, he understands immediately.

“Yes.”

And just like that, she breathes easier.

“Who is it?” - he asks quietly in a moment. She doesn’t need to see his mind to know what he asks.

“A girl.”

“Asuma said name Mirai,” - Shikamaru tells her of something she’s long suspected - that Asuma thought of the name. That’s why she hadn’t thought of it, she thought of the name as of his last present to her that she’ll get in time.

Mirai.

The wind rustles, the trees sway. Her daughter's name is Mirai.

“I’ll have to obey Ino from now on,” - he says after a long pause.

She can’t help the puff of laughter escaping her, but she masks it for cough. Truth is, this is why Ino won - jounins aren’t just stronger than chuunins, they are team leaders, and Ino’s shown great leadership skills.

Asuma had a theory that genin groups have the same dynamic to them - one is the leader, one is the ace, and one is the heart. Chouji is undoubtedly the heart of his team, Ino, Asuma always said, is the leader, and Shikamaru is the ace.

Kurenai wondered about her team. Who is the ace - Shino or Hinata? Who is the leader - Kiba or Shino? And who’s the heart - Kiba or Hinata? It was hard, she’s been too close to them. Maybe in the beginning it was - Shino - ace, Kiba - leader and Hinata the heart. But now it changed - Hinata became the ace, Shino - the leader and Kiba is the heart of the team.

But she could see it true in other teams, in Kakashi’s - Sasuke is the ace, Naruto is the heart and Sakura is the leader. In Guy’s - Neji the ace, Lee the heart and Tenten the leader.

What about her early team?

She was definitely not the leader. She didn’t feel like she was ace or the heart. Asuma was their ace. But he was also their leader and, for her, the heart of the team.

“In my team when we lost the leader, we all were genins,” - she offers.

“Did they give you a new leader?” - Shikamaru asks, confused, he must’ve heard of their team but never heard of another leader.

“Kakashi had the jounin rank, so he was assigned our team leader, for the time. It was very embarrassing,” - Kurenai tries to keep the story light, but the truth is, at the time they, torn by the death of Sakumo, were humiliated to be Kakashi’s, of all people, underlings. Kakashi must've been even more torn. That was the year his team lost Obito. - “We all became chuunins in a year.”

“Nothing like embarrassment as the motive.”

“You’ll see it on next year’s exams. Both you and Sakura will get jounin ranks,” - she’s seen the pink-haired girl despairing when she wasn’t allowed to join because team 7 came too late.

“On the form - why do you want to become a jounin, we’ll write - to make Ino shut up for once.”

Kurenai smiles, abashed. “I guess.”

Shikamaru halts, he probably feels awkward, too, that he let himself speak so freely in her presence.

“My motives to become a ninja weren’t all that pure, too,” - she says before formality settles over them.

Shikamaru settles back, ready to hear it. Kurenai thinks that this could be her peace offering - that there’d be no discomfort between them because of what had happened.

Kurenai stalls, wondering how to tell it.

“My mother has a tofu shop,” - but then Shikamaru knows it. Kurenai wonders if she should ask about his visits to her mother. - “When I was little I used to help her. And there was a boy who came there frequently.”

Shikamaru isn’t looking at her. She sees in his profile that his lips tense, hiding the smile, he is amused, knows what this story is about. His eyes look into the forrest.

“Sometimes he came with his friends, sometimes with his family. Soon, I understood that he goes to the academy, and begged my mother to sign me in.”

“And that boy was Asuma,” - Shikamaru smiles softly, not quite asking a question, at last looking at her, with something like happiness at such neatly-tied story, at the piece of his teacher’s life that he learns of. He looks at ease, leaned back on his hands, forrest behind him and wind touching them both gently.

“No, it was Genma,” - she drops.

Shikamaru sits straight, his eyes look at her, distrusting, he hadn’t expected it. She sends him her six-year old feelings of infatuation while looking upward at the older boy to prove that she isn’t joking.

Kurenai laughs at his face, and he chuckles, too. He still looks at her disbelievingly.

“I’m surprised Genma hadn’t told you,” - she says. - “I was very embarrassing.”

But then, for Genma, she was only one of many, many, many other girls. He might’ve forgotten. He might've not noticed.

“Did Asuma know?”

“Shikamaru, entire academy knew.”

He chuckles.

“Asuma told me once...” - and then he stops, probably not knowing if it’s appropriate for him to talk to her about Asuma. She encourages him on, - “He told me that you both fell for each other when you were nine.”

Kurenai is surprised Asuma would tell Shikamaru something like that. She never talks to her students about Asuma, never tells them of her love life, even if she doesn’t mind to hear their stories.

“That’s true. I fell for him when we were assigned to one team, and he told me he started liking me back in the academy.”

“Hold on, what?” - Shikamaru turns his whole body to her in confusion.

She doesn’t understand what it is born from. She looks at him, questionably.

Shikamaru thinks of something, and then asks, “Are you younger than Asuma?”

“Yes, by three years,” - she understands his confusion now. It seemed impressive then, to graduate at age of nine, and to be placed into the team with boys older by three years, but not much of an achievement in the face of Kakashi getting jounin rank at twelve.

“Oh,” - Shikamaru says.

She doesn’t say anything, feeling awkward and hating herself for it. She stands up, Shikamaru helps her up when he understands what she’s doing. He stands up, too.

“I’ll see you,” - she says, meaning that he should return to their regular arrangement, if he wishes to. He squeezes her hand from where he took it to help her in farewell and steps back from her.

She takes two steps, and then remembers something, “Oh and Happy Birthday,” he watches her, but his face is shielded from the moonlight and she can’t see them. She waits because she thinks he wants to say something.

“Can I walk you?” - he asks at last.

That’s it? She breathes out the tension.

“Please do.”

  

* * *

 

The next morning Pain’s invasion begins.

There is the last moment of ignorance when she thinks that it is an earthquake, and wakes up, and hears the petrified screams of the villagers. She dresses up hurriedly, her stomach, for the first time during the pregnancy becoming a burden, and with her wall coming down with something punching it way through, Kurenai makes a run for the staircase. Amidst the shaking walls and rising panic, and fists of some creature destroying the building, somehow she doesn’t die, her instincts polished by years of service, and sees the world outside.

She sees the village’s destructions, and she sees the number of the beasts, but one is near her, and so she does have the time to assess her position in regarding to the troops, but has to jump into the battle. Pregnant or not, she has the responsibility to protect the civilians.

The beast is enormous, most likely, the result of summoning jutsu. A centipede with numerous heads and bodies entangled together.

She has no better tactic than to jump on it, in order to give the civilians the chance to run away. The beast notices her and screams at her. She pushes the knife filled with her chakra inside, trying to rip the beast apart with her chakra. One of centipede’s bodies twists in agony and tries to attack her with a shriek, and Kurenai is about to land on that centipede’s back, dislodging the attack, is instead punched with enormous pain from her stomach that makes her lose the balance. She twists just enough during her fall so that she’d fall on her back.

“Kurenai!” - she hears the scream as she hits the ground, and air leaves her. Her vision goes completely black, either because she dropped her head on the stone or because of another punch from the inside.

Shikamaru, she recognized his voice before, takes her from behind and drags away from the danger. The centipede is held by his shadow, but not for long. After the first pull, centipede releases free, and Shikamaru jumps from in front of her. Kurenai with her blackening vision sees that the body that she’s attacked is ripped apart, and, with the last effort against pain, sends the memory of how she’d done it to Shikamaru.

Another punch comes, she sees nothing and screams, the pain infiltrates everywhere, but is originated from within her. Kurenai barely has the mind to think it, but she knows that something isn’t right.

Shikamaru screams her something, she doesn’t hear it. She looks at his fight, notices the explosive kunai he takes out of his bag, understands what he intends to do, and crawls behind the protection of the wall. All the while pain continues. This isn’t right, Kurenai thinks. The labor pushes are supposed to be more spread in time, something's very wrong. She isn’t supposed to give birth for another four weeks.

Shikamaru appears in front of her, and hugs her away from the explosion - the debris and the sound hitting them both, but he takes most of it on himself.

“You need to get to evacuation quarters,” - he screams at her, immediately after, the village’s destruction continuing in all it’s ugly sounds all around them. He holds her shoulders, backing enough to see another painful punch. Kurenai twists in his hands, mouth open, but she can’t even scream.

“What is it, what is it, Kurenai?” - she hears him asking her, horrified, but she can’t even gasp. Her eyes go back, her body tightens like a bow back. This can’t be the pain of giving birth. Kurenai has felt the labor in other people’s minds, she knows what the pain is supposed to be, and this isn’t it. Her heart might give out, and it isn't a figure of speech. Pain is about to kill her, - “Did the labor begin?”

His question is a joke.

Shikamaru tries to lift her, and at long last the wave of it is subsided enough, becomes something that can be endured, that she tries to accommodate her body in his hands.

“Not far,” - she asks, her voice not even a whisper but a movement of her lips. Shikamaru nods, they enter her building, and he kicks the first door open - the apartment empty, smelling the way houses where old people live smell. Kurenai notices many carpets and tea cups behind glass and then pain engulfs her again. She jerks in it, and falls from Shikamaru’s hands with a heavy thud on a carpet. At long last, the waters flush away.

This isn’t right, this isn’t right, she thinks in her tortured mind. She opens her mouth so she wouldn’t crush her teeth down, but the screams doesn’t come out - only the foamy saliva bubbles her throat, and she gasps through it for air.

Shikamaru is near her - his face in front, he is saying something soothing and his hands are caressing her face. Something terrible shifts in her stomach, wild movement that she’s never felt before, and then everything quietens. Kurenai’s heart pangs, understanding that something has happened inside her, something crucial. The pain subsides to bearable ache, to the expected torture of woman’s labor.

Shikamaru’s face is white and strained in tension. She places one hand on his cheek, trying to communicate that it the pain has eased. But inside she is in panic - something is terribly terribly wrong. Outside the pain that becomes more and more bearable and tolerable, but there is such stillness to her body.

“Help me to bed,” - she says hoarsely. Her voice’s spent. “You’ll have to help me deliver the baby,” - she thinks at him, too exhausted to pity him.

His eyes are in panic, she sees the tears ready to form, but he has himself under control and nods like she’s given him the command. He lifts her up, and places her on the bed just behind the door.

Out there is war, they are lucky if they have another moment hidden away from it, he can’t even go look for a medic.

Kurenai settles into the right pose, cuts down her clothing, feeling too much pain to be embarrassed, she just needs to brave this labor. This is all she’s going to focus on.

But when she sees Shikamaru looking out and not on her, she sighs, knowing herself, and throws the bed cover onto herself. He’s going to see everything, anyway, she scolds herself.

The wave of pain lingers, but there are no more punches to it. Experimentally, Kurenai tries to push, tensing her belly, and her mind explodes with the feeling. She drops back onto the bed with a meek moan, she can’t even scream the extent of it. The tears sprinkle out of her eyes, Shikamaru is already there, right behind her.

“Kurenai, Kurenai?” - he panics into her ear.

At long last she surfaces enough above the pain to whine. She wants to complain like she did when she’s seen toddlers do - “it hurts, it hurts.”

Only the training she’s received on how to disconnect from the pain, in case she’s ever captured by another nation, that prevents her from doing that.

“It’s alright, it’s going to be alright, I sent the message to Hokage, she’ll send Katsuyu here.”

Katsuyu, Kurenai thinks, delirious in the heat of her torture. The giant slug is supposed to make her feel better?

Shikamaru sends her the memory of Katsuyu splitting into small creatures, each capable of healing, he holds her behind her back, trying to sooth her by stroking her gently. His head is touching hers. She thinks she feels him kiss her hair. The pain subsides by waves.

Is this what he was doing by the window? Kurenai wonders, drifting on the release.

She wants to cry even more now - because of mere memory of pain. What was that?

Kurenai places her hand on her stomach, gingerly, anticipating the pain to hit her again. Only now she notes it, and she pushes the cover down to see her belly in full light - it isn’t right. Ever since she started gaining weight, the outline of her body has been more or less same - same tight-skin ball, only growing steadily.

Now it is obscene. Her stomach looks like a clay ball that’s been squeezed in child’s careless fist - it lost it’s right form, it's symmetry, the skin isn’t tight. She looks like instead of her belly she has a monster for it.

She touches one of the angles outlining the figure within, barely daring to touch. And another thought comes, the thought that was all this time behind the terror that she’s felt from that terrible twist inside her, she knows why she panicked - ever since she started showing, the child inside has felt alive, because there was, even in the moments of calmness, even when she wasn’t moving, a steady something, a hum or a breath, a steady wave of other’s mind, who knows what, and it isn’t there now. Only complete, total silence. Kurenai is alone in her body.

“Shikamaru,” - she says in rising panic. He moves his face closer to hers, hugs her tighter, trying to calm her. - “You have to get the child out of me,” she sends him her panic, but can’t focus to explain it to him, can’t force the right sentence, too petrified.

He leaves her, and jumps to the window. Katsuyu is here.

She sees Shikamaru explaining the situation to Katsuyu, doesn’t know what he’s saying - did he understand that something terribly wrong has happened? She can’t seem to focus, only looks at her monstrous body.

Katsuyu, such a small part of her, is being placed by Shikamaru near her. She says something in her calm, tender voice, but Kurenai doesn’t hear it.

“We have to get the child out,” - she tries to make them understand how crucial that is, that it needs to happens fast, it needs to happen now.

“Yes, it seems like cesarean section is being required,” - Katsuyu says.

Kurenai calms, if only a little, there’s something that Katsuyu will do, Katsuyu now takes the leadership.

“Do it,” - she says.

“Kurenai, there are no anaesthetics,” - Shikamaru tells her.

It’s alright, she sends him, she’ll brave it out.

But he still looks at her with desperation. When she tries to see his mind, he closes it off. Kurenai feels a wave of panic - what is it that he tries to hide from her? But it isn’t important, they need to get started fast.

She turns to Katsuyu, awaiting her to get on with it.

“Oh, no, Kurenai, in this form, I’m too small to do anything, I’ll navigate Shikamaru,” - she reads Kurenai's open mind and replies calmly.

She tries Katsuyu’s mind, unlike Shikamaru's without a block, and sees Katsuyu’s thoughts - _unnatural position of the embryo, Tsunade might’ve been able to move the foetus without harm, premature delivery, and the lack of heartbeat inside_. Katsuyu thinks that the child is dead, but if they hurry, CPR might help.

“Get on with it,” - Kurenai orders Shikamaru.

Shikamaru takes the kunai out, Kurenai thinks he’s only twenty, and he looks it - she sees he’s afraid. He pretends for her, and she is grateful for it.

“Shikamaru, it is better if you use chakra to make the cut,” - Katsuyu suggests, calm , almost offensively so, but it calms Kurenai. She trusts Katsuyu.

Shikamaru releases the blue light around his hand, shaping it into edge along the palm of his hand. He is focused on her belly.

Katsuyu shows him where to cut, and warns him to feel the right amount of pressure so that not to touch Kurenai’s organs or the child. He nods, and brings his hand closer, Kurenai thinks that it is happening too slowly. Suddenly, at the last moment, he looks at Kurenai. She wants to tell him to get going, but before she does that, he brings himself closer to her, with the free hand captures her head and places his lips on hers. Kurenai touches his face, “Yes, yes, it’s going to be alright,” - she tries to say, but he is hopeless. She moves a bit forward to calm him. He kisses her, opening up to her, and she feels his worry, his desire for her to stay alive, that he’d do anything for that, how much he dreads. The city’s destruction continues. Kurenai kisses him back to show him that she understands, that she trusts him, that everything will be alright, and then pushes him.

He doesn’t look at her, he is more resolute. Kurenai feels something strange happening to Katsuyu, but she focuses that out once Shikamaru begins to cut. He is slow, feeling for her organs and Mirai.

“Yes, Shikamaru, that will do. Now insert your hand and feel for the child’s head,” - Katsuyu’s voice is weird, slowed.

Shikamaru notices it, too, because he looks at the slug. Kurenai doesn’t. The pain from the cut is bearable, but she’s so afraid as to how he’ll find child’s head in such grotesque form.

Shikamaru feels her anxiousness, and, with a flutter of a look at her, inserts his hand inside. She pushes the scream back. This is alright, this is bearable.

He puts his hand inside to the elbow, and Kurenai is punched with the pain from before. The unbearable one. Mercifully, she blacks out.

She is kicked into consciousness with another punch of pain as Shikamaru rips the child from her through the bloodied wound. He presses a cloth to her wound. She is awakened with her scream, but there is something more terrifying than the pain that forces her, a trained assassin, prepared to be tortured, scream, something more horrid than the scream of all the villagers just beyond the walls and that is the lack of scream from Mirai.

She lifts on her elbows, braving the pain, tears are not letting her see, and she wipes them. She sees Shikamaru panicking, he is holding the child, nursing it, he gently slaps the bottom of her child.

“Katsuyu, what should I do, Katsuyu?” - he asks tensely of the slug. At last, Kurenai looks at Katsuyu - she is dried out, wrinkled, her colour is dulled. What is happening to her?

“You need to perform the CPR, but it’s too dangerous since you don’t have the training, you’ll smash all the organs. I would’ve done it, but I’m loosing the chakra to help Tsunade,” - she takes too long to reply.

Kurenai sees in her weakened mind Tsunade - the slugs are all giving her just enough to function, Tsunade has spread all the rest chakra across the villagers to heal them. Both the leader and Katsuyu have nothing else to give. If they are still alive, it is because in the next moment they won’t be. Kurenai knows same is true for her, the pain is leaving her, but so is the life. It matters little to her, but Mirai must be saved.

“Then call for a medic,” - Shikamaru still shakes the baby, walking around nervously. When Kurenai spreads her arms out, he notices it and with a whimper jumps close to give her the child. His hands and her child are covered in blood, she takes the creature tenderly. Her child is, undeniably, dead. She cries silently onto her child’s face, shakes her daughter with last remnants of strength.

Shikamaru keeps giving orders to Katsuyu: “Send Ino, tell her that it is my command.”

In Katsuyu’s mind, where Kurenai seeks for the last hope, she sees Katsuyu’s answer before the innocently-honest slug speaks - Ino has died. Kurenai sees kunai entering Ino’s skull through the forehead. She immediately sends the thought, 'Lie to him!', and Katsuyu says, “She is fighting at the other side of the village, by the time she’ll get here, it’ll be too late.”

God, Kurenai thinks, what of her students… She almost asks, but then can’t find the strength to do it.

“Then send Sakura here,” - Shikamaru grits through the teeth, his red hands are holding her elbows, between them is her dead daughter. He is looking at Mirai, same as she is, their foreheads touching.

Kurenai looks at him and understands that this is it. With Tsunade dying, Sakura becomes the first medic of the village. With the new responsibility she won’t be able to come. The hope is all lost. She cries harder, but she makes no sound.

Katsuyu, with the last movements, moves closer to Kurenai. Her last thought is a gift because she doesn’t say it out loud, it is something Kurenai knows. She tells Kurenai that her organs are severely damaged, she won’t be able to survive. And then she, quietly, dies. Shikamaru doesn’t even notice it. He cries, too, their tears wash her dead daughter’s face away from the blood.

Kurenai looks up at him. She will be with her daughter in just a moment, but he will live on. She lifts her heavy arms onto his face, leaving the trace of blood on his face, and holds his face. He is so young, his tears leave him without restraint now, he hiccups and is struggling to breathe. Kurenai’s eyes are filled with tears and she has to blink them away to see him clearly.

The building around them starts shaking.

“Shikamaru, you have to leave,” - she says in a fight to move her tongue. He shakes his head, and cries harder. 'You have to leave,' - she sends him.

“No, no,” - he moans at last looking at her. He looks like he begs her, like she is forcing him. His eyes move around her face, taking it in, and then, in some fit of anguish, he cries out loud, and brings his lips onto her. He kisses her frantically, passionately, taking her head in his hands and holding it tight. She has her hands still on his cheeks, and soothingly strokes them, answering to his kiss calmly. Her heart breaks for him.

The world around them starts to break - the walls are coming down, the stones are falling from the crumbling ceiling. He still has the time to escape. She thinks into him the last truth, that there is no hope for her. But he has to live.

He knows it, Katsuyu warned him from the start, and he stubbornly keeps going, not releasing her, he keeps blindly seeking her face, even as she turns it away, he keeps whimpering for her, his hands find hers on Mirai, he holds the child, too. Kurenai is more and more weakened by the moments, but she feels nothing about her death. At long last, he releases her and looks at her, his hands are smearing blood on Mirai’s head. She looks back at him and feels her vision slowly fading to black. Her hands lose the sense of touch the last ones, and, even as she drifts away, she feels her daughter’s body beneath her fingers.

When she dies, Kurenai is lightened. She almost feels both Asuma and Mirai awaiting her.

Shikamaru lives not much longer, the wall falls down and presses all three of them together beneath it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for chapter 1: labor, some violence, major characters death. 
> 
> There are kisses when Shikamaru is twenty and Kurenai twenty-eight, and no sex for the 1 chapter.
> 
> Chapter 2 is coming out on June, 15


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter: some allusions to eating disorders, Shikaku is (maybe) OOC, mention of sex between minors

 

Shikamaru wakes first, and before he has the time to understand that he’s survived and feel despair, the cry wails. Shikamaru can’t remember ever hearing infants crying, but he knows in the instant who is making that sound.

Impossible, he knows it. The child was born dead. He remembers his overwhelming panic, the weightless creature in his arms that he was trying so desperately to awaken.

The dark is all around him, but he feels the warmth of the bodies beneath him. Somehow he isn’t crushing them, same can be said about the stone wall above him.

Kurenai coughs, his eyes adjust to the darkness just enough to see her eyes. There is no panic, but gentle confusion.

They are both alive, relief sinks inside him, and even the terror of their situation can’t quench it.

He hears the voices above them.

“We are here,” - he screams, but his scream is nothing compared to Mirai’s. He thinks he hears someone calling out, “There’s somebody there, a child.” Good, he thinks, they’ll be prioritized.

Shikamaru knows that whatever the miracle that brought them back is, they still need to get out of the trap of the entire building above them - he pushes into the wall, and it lifts a little. Surprisingly his body isn’t giving out to the pressure, but he doesn’t have the time to analyze the miracle. Kurenai holds Mirai, trying her best to shield her from the stones falling, he hears her cooing.

Above them, someone moves enough stones, for them to hear, “Where are you?”

Shikamaru feels Kurenai’s thought creating a line between them and the searching party that’ll lead them straight towards them. He feels the heavy weight beyond the wall being lifted, they are about to be saved. Already, there’s enough light for him to see Kurenai’s face, Mirai’s open mouth, she is still screaming, but already softer, Kurenai calmed her. In the last moment of them being trapped, he asks Kurenai, “Are you alright?”

And the weight on his shoulders lifts, he sees her face in the light of the day, her eyes are soft and joyful at the same time. 'Yes.'

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long for him to be saved from beneath the ruins of the buildings, but Kurenai and Mirai are trapped in it. Shikamaru is forced for the hospital even though he tries everything to override the command, uses all his connections, but the order came from his father, and Shikaku appears there to manhandle him into the hospital. He knows his father - he isn’t that worried about Shikamaru, he only hates for Shikamaru to sabotage his orders. He has half a mind to fight his father, but doesn’t do it when Kurenai asks him to go, too.

He looks at her face one last time, at the child crying and alive in her hands. She is calm, calmer than he is. She thinks at him, 'I want you to go.' He is humiliated, even though Kurenai hadn’t meant it in that way. Still he knows he won’t be able to be much of a help. He only wanted, selfishly, to be sure of their safety.

He is rushed to the hospital, and is one amongst thousands of people there. There aren’t even enough of medics to go round, he thinks bitterly at his father, but then remembers that not everyone is a mind-reader. That might be for the best.

Shikamaru notes the weirdness of his state, just a moment ago he felt alright, healthy and strong, but suddenly his legs give out, his father holds, not letting him fall. He understands that the miracle’s spell wasn’t a long one, and feels a surge of panic - Kurenai’s legs are smashed beneath the stone, but before he has the time to do anything about it, his conscience leaves him.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes, it is dark. He is laying on hospital bed, the systems connecting to him outline the room in metallic light. Behind the window, he sees the full moon. His mother is sitting on a chair by his bed. She is asleep. His entire body is in great pain, but it is dulled by the drugs.

He moves, with great hardship, the oxygen mask on his face, and then tries to breathe out the question.

“Kurenai? Are they alright?” - he rasps, his mother wakes from her fitful slumber, and comes to his bed.

“Yes, they are alright, they were saved, everyone was saved,” - his mother says while tugging one of the lines hooked onto him. He falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

Few moments more pass like that. Shikamaru wants to scream at his mother and demand her to simply answer some of his questions, but before he has the time to speak his mind, he is already asleep. His mother has always held the unchallenged belief that she knows him and what he needs better than he does, so obviously she doesn’t bother listening to him now.

He feels his father’s presence by his bed, his conversations with his mother. Shikamaru understands that with Hokage gone, his father’s responsibilities multiplied.

 

* * *

 

 

In three days time, he wakes, and doesn’t understand why was he hospitalized in the first place - there is nothing wrong with him. Had he been induced with drugs for no reason than he should’ve not been feeling healthy? But then Shikamaru remembers what happened when the building fell. He hadn’t simply lost conscious, he remembers. He had been dead.

The nurse that enters the room to find him awake is from a different village, and knows little, and can’t help him.

 _Kurenai_ , his mind flashes, and he struggles to his feet. Three days on bed and he has to learn how to walk anew. The nurse tries to shoulder him and help, but he refuses her fuss. He asks her to bring Sakura here. Useless request, Shikamaru knows, Sakura would be too busy to have a spare time, but it works in making the nurse leave him alone.

He walks, determined, to the information desk and asks about Kurenai Yuuhi. And… And then Shikamaru falters. Sarutobi or Yuuhi? And her daughter Mirai.

Mirai has been placed with other infants in the children’s ward, and Kurenai’s chamber is on the same floor, and he goes there, even though he’s warned the patients in that ward are not yet awake.

He gathers another piece of information - that all people who have died during Pain’s attack came back to life, but closer to the evening all started feeling pain from their bodies healing all the wounds of their bodies that were incompatible with life. Medics decided to induce them with painkillers and wait it out. The lesser the wounds were, the quicker the healing process happened.

Shikamaru remembers Kurenai’s abnormal body twisting on the bed. She’s been placed with the patients expected to awaken among last ones.

When he finds the chamber he is surprised - she is one among many there. Shikamaru understands the need to economy the space of the hospital, especially for the patients who can’t be bothered, but why then was he placed in the solitary cell?

Probably one of the privileges of being Nara.

He thinks he’ll need to pull some strings to move Kurenai into his chamber.

He finds her at the end of the room, near the window. He sees that there’s someone with her, and when he pulls the curtain, he greets Kiba. He is afraid to look at Kurenai’s face.

Kiba isn’t wearing the hospital clothing, and so Shikamaru sits by the window to ask him what he knows.

Kiba, as it turns out, knows as much as one can know. He is one of the very few survivors who hadn’t died.

Shikamaru asks him who died.

“Of my team - everyone except me. Hinata was beaten so badly, Sakura says she won’t be surprised if she is the very last person to be healed. I didn’t even know what happened to Kurenai until everything was over,” - Kiba settles on the chair, covers his eyes and slumps.

“My team?” - even if Shikamaru knows that no one is in danger now, he still feels cold head to toe, waiting for the answer.

“Ino died,” - Kiba says. Shikamaru knows that she is alright now, but the information still punches him in the gut. - “Chouji was with Kakashi, and Kakashi died protecting him.”

Knowing Chouji, he will feel guilty about it, Shikamaru thinks. Shikamaru admires Kakashi, so much, but, if there were no miracle, he’d want that fight to end with the same outcome.

Kurenai’s presence calls for him, he wants to look at her, but Shikamaru doesn’t want to do it with Kiba near. Shikamaru doesn’t know if he’d able to control himself once he’ll notice her.

“How?” - Shikamaru asks, and he doesn’t need to explain more.

“Pain himself. He used some kind of god-like jutsu to revive the entire village,” - Kiba says.

Shikamaru frowns, “Why?”

“Well, that is part of the history now,” - Kiba at last smiles, and tells him about Naruto’s fight with Pain.

“Can’t believe we all now owe that idiot,” - Shikamaru says, but kindly. He can’t even begin to express the gratitude he has, the awe he feels.

Kiba barks in laughter, “Imagine if someone told us back in the academy, huh?” he stands to leave, and then looks questionably at Shikamaru.

“You were with her, I’ve been told?” - Kiba says before he leaves.

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” - he nods thoughtfully and exits. Shikamaru wonders what he knows, what he suspects, what he thinks of. Knowing Kurenai, she probably hasn’t told her team of their arrangement. Stupid word, arrangement, Shikamaru thinks, looking through the window. He doesn’t see the destructed village, only the nature. That’s a good view.

At last, he gathers the strength to look at Kurenai. She looks the way she normally does - her face calm, as if she is asleep. He doesn’t see any signs of illness or pain, but then he doesn’t look beneath the white linen cover. Her twisted body is still behind his eyelids, but, here, behind the cover, she only looks asleep. And alive, undeniably alive.

Shikamaru wipes his tears, he cannot resist the pull that tugs him closer to her, and he kneels before her bed, but he doesn’t dare to touch. He only watches her asleep and alive.

'I’m so sorry,' - he thinks at her. He won’t be able to form the words, but with her he never needed to do that.

She doesn’t react to him, she is somewhere else. Kiba has told him that she hasn’t wakened, not once, yet. Unlike his slumber, her sleep was deep.

Everything comes back in his memory - the terror of what had happened to them, of what Kurenai went through, and Shikamaru doesn’t know how he’ll be able to face her, once she’ll start waking.

He leaves when the nurse comes to check the chamber, and the orange light from the sunset paints the room warm. Shikamaru goes to check on Mirai. He doesn’t think Kurenai would like to be away from her daughter. He’ll need to arrange them to be together.

 

* * *

 

He bumps into Temari as he walks into the hospital. Temari and the hospital is something incompatible. Shikamaru can’t imagine her being sick, and her freaky brothers likewise.

His confusion must be all over his face, or it is just her who’s learned him so well across the years, because she holds out the documents and waves them in front of Shikamaru, “Suna’s help to Konoha in face of fifty medics,” - loud as always, and careless, too. And, of course, sharp-edged beautiful, that’s constant, too.

They go to the cafe in the clinic, Shikamaru thinks that he can afford to spare the time, all the people he’s planning to visit aren’t even awake, but he still feels a bit of guilt - 'I’m sorry, Kurenai, Mirai,' he sends across the ward.

“So, what’s new?” - Temari asks like they aren’t in the middle of hospital that has people who were dead coming back to life. Holy shit, she is one of a kind.

“Let’s get back together,” - Shikamaru says, he and Temari don’t need smoothing the deals out to each other.

Temari laughs - a full, deep-throat laughter that brings everyone’s attention to them, Shikamaru feels the disapproval of other cafe-sitters, but hardly cares. She laughs long and hard, Shikamaru waits it out.

“So dying fixed your brains, at long last?” - Temari says.

Shikamaru would absolutely cherish her, or whatever else, he’s ready to promise, he is kind of desperate. They need to get back together, but Shikamaru knows it is impossible.

“Alright, you have someone else you can introduce me to?” - he keeps pushing.

“You could at least try to be heartbroken because of me, you know it?” - Temari says carelessly. She’s changed two boyfriends, Shikamaru's heard, after their break-up. Herself, she is barely a picture of heart-brokenness. But then, for Temari, it isn't equal. When he broke up with her, she tried to murder him, and Shikamaru is still grateful she hasn’t told Gaara to snap him in halves, but decided to take matters into her own hands.

“Never even knew you’re such a horndog,” - she says, becoming invested. There’s nothing Temari loves more than people asking her for help, it feeds her ego to the state it needs to be - bigger than the world. Of course, she is also genuinely good and self-sacrificing, but that’s mostly for her brothers and Suna. - “It’s not going to be as good, Shikamaru, with others. I sort of ruined your sex life chances,” - she says, in mocking apology.

Shikamaru resists the urge to roll his eyes. Temari will rip them from his skull and eat them, if he does it.

He was fifteen, and she was sixteen when they’ve done it the first time. Temari tried to act cool and all-knowing, and Shikamaru has never encountered a problem he hadn’t been able to freestyle his way out of, but for them both it was the first time, and, it turned out, they both knew too little. In complete dark, because as it turned out, they both weren’t ready to show off their bodies, Shikamaru thought it was fair to him, he never even tried to make a big deal of his package, but Temari was always suggestive, and then wouldn’t even let him undo her bra until they curtained the window from the moonlight, they fumbled, touched, squeezed, Temari ouched in pain and twisted him in her fingers as revenge, they both got mad, had a huge spat, and, even if, they as always cooled easily and forgot the argument, both found ways not to talk about sex for at least a year. Shikamaru was seventeen when at last, something changed, and they found the pleasure in hiding in every dark corner, and tried to make their schedules aline so that they’d be able to disappear for days.

“Alright, nice seeing you, Temari, bye,” - he stands up. If she’s going to joke, they’ll achieve nothing.

“No, no, no, no,” - Temari holds his hand, preventing him from leaving. She smiles more sincerely. Once upon a time, Shikamaru loved that smile more than anything. - “C’mon, Shikamaru,” she says apologetically, or as apologetically as she can. He lets her lead him out of the cafe, and she suggests they take a walk in the gardens by the hospital, so that there’ll be no unwanted ears listening to them.

Shikamaru lets her pull him forward.

“So tell big smart Temari what is going on,” - she is annoying, but he gives in. She might be the only person who might’ve suspected something, and anyway, she won’t let him go until he sates her hunger for gossip.

He thinks of the right way to phrase it, he can’t say something that embarrassing, and never to Temari, so he starts reluctantly,

“So, Asuma’s widow, right?”

“Yeah, the one you fell in love with?”

He tries not to show it, but he is surprised. He has felt Temari has had her suspicions, but for her to speak that plainly…

Temari shrugs, “There had to be someone else you fell with, and it couldn’t be Ino.”

So Temari only learned because of her unwavering confidence that no one could simply fall out of love with her, but had to fall for someone else. Shikamaru is impressed and softened by this quality with equal measures of feeling annoyed by it.

“Right,” - he decides not to think much of it. He decides to bite the bullet and simply admit everything in concise terms, hoping for embarrassment not to sink in. - “She noticed it, too, and then told me to stay away from her, and, well, months later she asked me if I got back together with you, I said yes.”

He doesn’t mention that right after Kurenai told him to leave, he’s had an argument that got him out of Hokage’s office for weeks in a row, to let him “cool off”, as Tsunade put it. The months that he’d spent lying around in his mother’s house, letting her nag over him, had to endure silenced disapproval of his father, missions being placed on his table that he waived off, of how he hadn’t wanted to do anything, and only found some resemblance of good mood when Chouji was coming by. He had the time to regret it a hundred times that he hadn’t been more secretive, that he hadn’t pushed the feelings deeper into himself. At long last, Tsunade forced him to train under Kakashi in preparation for the jounin exams. He’s had to do that for his team, so he trained obediently, fighting and learning each day to exhaust himself out of his brain.

He waits for Temari to start laughing at him, and mocking him, but she looks at him thoughtfully and pitifully. Shikamaru imagines what she’s thinking that lets her be that generous to him - that Asuma’s widow is an impossible love, especially for him.

“I’ll think of something,” - she says, not unkind. Shikamaru rolls his eyes, and she punches him. He loses all sensation in that arm for the rest of the day.

He thinks of something, as he turns away from her to go to Kurenai, - “Find someone beautiful,” he warns her. It’s not above Temari to seek revenge on him. He isn’t hunting the personality, he only needs to look good.

“Damn right, Shikamaru, you have a reputation to uphold,” - Temari laughs, and, yes, it will be hard for Shikamaru to up his first love, but he can’t let Temari know that.

“I have to have some compensation from woman’s community after being with you,” - he hollers as he places some safe distance between them.

Even from afar he sees Temari narrowing her eyes. She places both her hands on her hips, strength in her pose.

“This is it,” - she promises. - “I’m telling Gaara.”

 

* * *

 

Kurenai awakens about a month after attack. Mirai is still not, but Sakura has assured him it might be for the best. Mirai's been born premature, it is best if she is shielded and healed by the powerful chakra for some time.

Shikamaru isn’t there when Kurenai wakes up, he hears it from Shino - he is long since awakened. Shikamaru heard that he’s died side by side with Ino, they both were leading what was available of Konoha 11.

Ino awakened only a day after Shikamaru, because obviously she did. They’ve been born with a day of difference, died on the same day and been reborn with a day of difference, too.

Shikamaru spends his days helping his father, entangled in the power-struggle along with him, but he tries to visit Kurenai and Mirai daily. Still, he is glad that she’s wakened without him nearby, even if he wishes very much to be there in equal shamelessness to his shame.

That month passed by, and not a day went without Shikamaru being tortured by the scene of her birth, and of her death. His incompetence shames him, he thought himself to be so deserving of the respect he’s received while working with Hokage - of everyone around him. Even Tsunade listened to his advices. The truth is, he realized, he is nothing to Hokage. If only Sakura had been there, if Ino was there instead of him - he was panicking, and Kurenai had to calm him, he was useless, and has done so much more harm than good. If there wasn’t any miracle of Pain sabotaging, he might as well had murdered Kurenai and Mirai both.

He doesn’t want to go to Kurenai. To look into her eyes, to feel her gently touching his mind and seeing everything, he is too ashamed of the relief that it'll bring him.

And he doesn’t go to the hospital that day, the first time in the month. In the morning, the path to the hospital is so ingrained in his routine, it takes physical force to control himself out the impulse. And well, the pull of Kurenai is something physical, too, something that he has to fight, too. And there is also guilt for not visiting Mirai.

He meets up with Nari after work, and lets her talk over him in waves. She is one of the medics come from Suna to help restore Konoha. He met her when Temari invited him to a dinner amongst sand-villagers, her red hair were noticeable from across the room. He’d wondered if such colour was natural, and soon learned that it was.

There is a certain strategy that needs to be executed in romantic relationships, that isn’t unlike the strategies of the war. There are certain actions that need to be done, there needs to exist the understanding of another person’s mind, and, Shikamaru isn’t interested in false humility, he is exceptional in all that. He would’ve felt a bit of shame in lying to another person, but he suspects that Nari has her own motives for dating him.

Shikaku adores Nari, and often congratulates Shikamaru with his ‘catch’. Shikamaru could’ve expected that - she is drop dead gorgeous, and his father doesn’t acknowledge women to have any other qualities that he’d appreciate beyond the measurement of their appearance.

He is prepared for another drunken evening of wooing Nari with dinner, wine, flowers, Shikamaru is surprisingly excellent in understanding the demands of chivalrous romance. His reward is greater than Nari’s, he thinks. Being with her, submitting himself to her demands and whims saves him from being alone with his thoughts and the ever-present pull of Kurenai, and his guilt that eats him alive.

Sakura comes into one of their meetings in Hokage’s office, and it is her who tells him that soon after Kurenai has awakened, so did Mirai.

At first, Shikamaru thinks that it only means that he needs to get ahold of himself, Mirai is his responsibility, and he needs to check on her. But whatever hesitations he’s had, they all evaporate when he realizes that if Mirai is awakened, Kurenai will need to watch over the child. Shikamaru placed them both in one room together, who will be there for Kurenai’s sleepless nights?

He goes into the clinic, resolute that he won’t disturb Kurenai with over-emotionality. Plus, the desire to see Mirai is genuine, and he never had to feel ashamed of it. He only wants to assume the role Asuma meant for him.

It is when he thinks about Asuma, right before Kurenai’s door, that he suddenly has to bend and holds himself up with the help of the wall - the unimportant detail of the attack comes back to hit him with full force. He thinks he needs to be glad to be ready to experience such trivialities, before he’d only been haunted with Kurenai’s twisted body, with gore of the day, her dead child that wouldn’t scream. Now he remembers his pathetic, desperate kiss he’d inflicted on her.

And then he thinks - there were two of them! He bites down the moan of embarrassment, and of shame. Asuma should be here and kill him, and Shikamaru would be glad to let him do it.

He crouches in front of Kurenai’s door, holding the wall. The passerby patients look at him, but none offers help, preferring not to notice him. The blissfulness of the isolation that appears because of human’s indifference.

He feels the familiar sensation around his chakra, and immediately places the mind block. Kurenai, instead of prodding on, Shikamaru knows how easy such untrained mind as his is for her to be opened, offers her thought, 'Come inside,' and he almost hears her gentle voice, and her calm face.

He stands up, breathes out, and enters Kurenai’s room.

She is glowing. She sits at the chair by the window, the night behind her, and even in the harsh fluorescent light of the hospital, she breathes out health. Mirai is lying in her crib, beneath the heating lamp, and, to stall the time, Shikamaru goes to check on her. As always, the sight of her pierces his heart. It is painful to feel such care for someone so fragile.

'She just fell asleep,' - Kurenai sends him. Exchanging thoughts is something so much more than exchanging the dialogue sentences. There is much and more behind every sentence - the language that is purely honest. Shikamaru feels Kurenai’s happiness, feels the tired exhaustion of the many hours she’s spent trying to lull Mirai, and her quiet celebration that she’s at last achieved it. There is warning for him to be quiet, but, Shikamaru thinks, there is also tender bragging of Kurenai’s achievement.

Mirai is so little, Shikamaru doesn’t know if she is supposed to be that little, or if it is abnormal, he’ll need to research more thoroughly infant’s development. He watches her nose and hand twitch. This sleep is so different from the one he’s been watching throughout the month for her to be under. Kurenai prods his mind, and Shikamaru lets her do what she wants, all his secret thoughts under the block. She looks at Mirai through his eyes, and Shikamaru is suddenly overwhelmed with the love that floods through Kurenai as she thinks about Mirai.

'She must be dreaming,' - she thinks at him, explaining Mirai’s twitchy movements.

Shikamaru steps backward to breathe. Everything in this room overwhelms him. Even the smell of it - the heating lamp above Mirai warms the room and make the sweet smell of them both be near suffocating.

He comes to the window, one of the doors is slightly open to let the autumn night inside. It is pleasant, he almost can breathe again. Kurenai looks at him, upward.

He looks at the sight before him. Through the glass he sees the black outline of the tree. The autumn swept all the leaves away.

They don’t speak, and Kurenai doesn’t reach to him. Mirai’s whimper makes her tense, but then Mirai falls silent again.

'It was very stupid of you,' - she sends him, at last. They shouldn’t speak, Shikamaru understands, not when Mirai’s sleep is such a tender creature.

Shikamaru doesn’t understand her words, and she must feel his confusion. There are many stupid things he’d done, especially with Kurenai, but he doesn’t know which one she means.

'To not leave us,' - she explains. She thinks of that last moment when she’s known she is about to die, and Mirai was already dead in her arms, and he was refusing her last wish. To feel that moment from her side, to know how easily she accepted her death, forces Shikamaru to turn his face away from Kurenai. He struggles not to lose it.

'I’m sorry,' - he sends her at last. He isn’t apologizing for what she’s accused him of, that moment never came back to torture him, it had nothing to do with the harm he’d done to her. No, those are the words he was hoping to say all that month, kept thinking of them.

Kurenai pinches the skin on his hand, gently and not painful at all, and resolutes, 'Well, it’s all ended up being alright.'

And her forgiveness that’s just as easy as he’s known it would be isn’t enough to make him feel atoned. The damp breaks, and he thinks of all the panic that he carried inside himself, torturing himself over the events of that day - her death, Mirai’s death, his uselessness, his weakness that depended on her giving him comfort instead of it being the opposite. He can’t hide it from her, it pours onto her like his mind vomit.

“Shikamaru, Shikamaru,” - she tries to calm him, but he is already crying, and trying to stifle it only makes it impossible to stop. Kurenai stands up, Shikamaru notes that she is unsure on her legs, and brings him close to her, and envelopes him in her hug. She can’t stand for long, and brings them both down - she sits back on the chair and he kneels in front of her. He can’t find the strength to step away from her embrace, when will his selfishness ever end?

He pacifies himself with thinking that this way his cry won’t wake Mirai up, and can’t fight against melting in Kurenai’s hands. He tries not to feel it, but he can’t not - she is soft, warm, her smell will make an addict of him.

Sometime after, when he got the time to control himself, but not found the strength to rip himself away from Kurenai, Mirai wakes and announces it with penetrating wail, and Shikamaru peels himself off from Kurenai and goes to the crib to pick Mirai up. He brings Mirai to Kurenai’s arms, Kurenai starts lifting her shirt, and Shikamaru whips his head to look through the window. When the feeding time passes, Shikamaru allows himself to look at Kurenai holding Mirai in her hands, and he thinks that Kurenai held him in such a similar way - only spreading out her motherly love. And he doesn’t aspire for anything else.

 

* * *

 

He knows he has to leave that night, that it would be inappropriate not to, and he’s always tried to satisfy Kurenai’s needs for propriety, even when there’s nobody to notice or care.

But then he thinks of her being alone all night long trying to lull Mirai to sleep when she hasn’t even regained her strength back, and he stays. He avoids Kurenai’s gaze, and tries not to look at her, but focuses on Mirai instead, afraid she’ll ask him to leave. He doesn’t hide from her how much he cares from Mirai, hoping to smooth her into allowing him to help her, even if for the sake of him. He does want to spend the time with Mirai, to care for her. She doesn’t tell him to leave. Not that night. He helps her, carrying Mirai to her, and then pacing the room through the next, waiting for Mirai to release the air, or simply calming her after she’s fed, or changing her diapers under Kurenai’s directions. Shikamaru knows that it is a testament to how tortured Kurenai is that she lets him help her, and he tries to show her his best, how much she can depend on him.

The next night, after the evening he spends with them, Kurenai tells him that it’s time for him to go. She does it so tenderly, it is impossible to be offended - he feels her noting his dark shadows under his eyes, and she tells him to go to sleep. That he’s already helped her too much. Shikamaru leaves, feeling stupid. He should’ve slept before coming to her.

He never dares to stay into the night again, but then when he notices Kurenai looking tired in the day, he spends more hours during the day by her - letting her sleep in between the feedings (during which he stubbornly looks through the window), and rest of the time soothing and nursing Mirai. This room, through that time becomes their solitary world, Shikamaru thinks, perfectly safe cube, entire life lived inside those walls.

 

* * *

 

Kurenai’s mother’s house is still not rebuilt, so Shikamaru, after receiving his father’s permission (“Asuma’s child? Yes, of course,” - he knows about Asuma’s last wish), asks her to live in one of the houses on Nara’s territory. Their residency is so deep in the forrest they were barely affected by the destruction. There is the main house, big enough to welcome some guests, but Shikamaru offers her one of the smaller houses, deeper in the forrest, far enough that she won’t be feeling like she is living with his family. He offers her to move in with her mother, but learns that her mother preferred to stay at one of the temporal buildings. He doesn’t ask why. He has already suspected that Kurenai’s mother doesn’t really like ninjas.

Kurenai, very reluctantly, agrees, he sees how much she wants to decline, but guesses she does it for Mirai. She says that she’d like to pay the rent, but his father is there and he leaves her no choice. Shikaku would never take money from a widow, never mind a single mother after destruction of her own house. Shikamaru sees that it becomes easier for her when her father offers other houses on their residency and even the rooms in the main house to those people whose houses were not yet rebuilt.

The house they settle in is tiny, and needs some work to be done to make it liveable, but it seems like Kurenai is relieved by the state of it - probably happy she won’t owe too much to his family.

Both his parents tease him, which annoys him beyond reason, when he begins rebuilding the house. Nari breaks up with him, which he definitely deserves, but at least not before Kurenai hears the rumours of them two (his father tells everyone about Shikamaru’s achievements).

Shikamaru notices that Kurenai tries to stay outside with Mirai, and often sees them both long before the house. Kurenai walks the beaten paths, carrying Mirai on her hands, or simply sits at the meadow at the back of the house, both in warm clothing against autumn’s chill.

There is a bubble around them - something between them two, the life shared. Shikamaru feels jealous of it, he’s been used to him being included in their world. But now, as Kurenai got better, she pushes him out.

Shikamaru has no doubts she does it, caring for him - at first she insists he needs to be with Nari, then she tells him that his responsibilities are too great to be abandoned, but it is also something she does for herself, and for Mirai, more selfish than she usually is.

Mirai demands for Kurenai to be always near, she monopolizes Kurenai in a way Shikamaru hadn’t known was even possible to need other person. Shikamaru knows that he needs to respect that sacred connection between the mother and her child, but he is also afraid, somehow. Kurenai looks so tired, he wants to force her to accept his help, and then Mirai is too fragile to not be needing the help of the entire village to help her survive.

But Kurenai tenses more and more whenever he tries to spend the time with them.

Shikamaru starts dating Shiho, suddenly afraid because of Kurenai’s continued reluctance with him. It is easy to woo Shiho, hard not to notice her hungering attention for him, and once he gets past that initial awkwardness of being with someone a bit weird, he finds her likeable. She is smart.

Still, Kurenai lets him see Mirai, but continues to be placing a distance between them. When her mother’s house is rebuilt, and she moves there, he even stops seeing her - she passes him Mirai to be taken care of during the week-ends, but rarely ever talks to him.

Months pass by, and Shikamaru tries not to be hurt, and forces himself to work on a whole bunch of problems that require his assistance. Maybe, this is normal, he reasons - Asuma wanted him to take care of Mirai, maybe Kurenai only let him be close to her when she’s had no way of separating herself from Mirai.

Shiho is a lot, but at least she disappoints his father - she is far smarter than he is. Shiho likes him quite a lot, which Shikamaru doesn’t understand, because this time he doesn’t really have the will to obey all the rules of dating - he goes into his usual slump, and lays either at his parents’ house and lets his mother nag over him, and his father pass his wisdom on him, or at Shiho’s apartment, who slowly tries to get him to move and act, and do something, but instead Shikamaru lets her accumulate her disappointment with him.

Week-ends he spends with Mirai. At first, Kurenai was making him drop Mirai back every evening, but slowly Shikamaru (and his mother) earned enough respect to get Mirai to stay overnights.

Mirai grows, the seasons change as her background. She grows slowly, or she booms into a whole other person instantly - somehow both are true. And, through all her changes, one remains most miraculous - she loves Shikamaru. Obviously, not as much as he loves her, but a whole lot more than he deserves. She is familiar with the Nara forrest and is fearless of it. And she grows and grows and grows, and never stops.

Kurenai’s twenty-ninth birthday comes.

He tries to give her a present for her birthday, a cake that Shiho helped him choose, the last fact he plans to drop subtly, but only Kurenai’s mother meets him downstairs, and tells him that Kurenai is very tired, and is currently sleeping.

Shikamaru entertains the thought that she’s only trying to avoid him, but then reasons that Kurenai wouldn’t be bothered all that much by him. Besides, the thought is selfish, motherhood is a tough burden, he knows. She must really be tired. He goes back to Shiho, and somehow, during the evening, they break up.

The summer is terrible - he can’t do anything but lay down, or wish to lay down. The war is breeding, terrible things happen, and Shikamaru must ensure Mirai’s future in that village, so he works, smokes, and spends time with Mirai in the forrest. Unlike him, she is completely untaken by the fatigue spell of the summer - she blooms the way the nature blooms - almost violently. Shikamaru is way too lazy to handle her, no wonder Kurenai sleeps in the day. That thought is the only thing that closes the distance between him and Kurenai, but it is a fantasy of understanding. He thinks they are growing apart from each other. He thinks that Kurenai probably doesn’t even notice the growing distance, because, maybe, for her the connection was unnoticeable. So he can’t even begrudge her for hurting him.

 

* * *

 

“It is going to be my birthday soon,” - he tells Mirai, who is busy ripping leafs apart. She laughs with delight at the destruction and Shikamaru smiles against himself. She can’t speak yet, but the sounds she makes he decides to take for agreement. He wonders if Kurenai’s dialogue with her daughter is more constructive, seeing as she can just read her mind.

“And, then, Ino’s birthday,” - which means yet again - party. Who cares if the world they are living in is about to be destroyed? Ino turns twenty-one.

“But after that, there’s going to be your birthday,” - Shikamaru tells Mirai. The selfish idea forms, but he pushes it out. He won’t enjoy it, Kurenai won’t enjoy it, and, maybe even Mirai won’t enjoy it.

Mirai slumps in his hands as they make the way through the village, late in the evening, purple sky above them, summer still lingering in the smell, he falters in front of Kurenai’s house. These days, he always does. He is afraid, he is longing, and he is even a little angry, but mostly hurt by the constant rejection. The evening sun flashes crimson behind the roof of Kurenai’s building.

Kurenai's mother meets him, and takes Mirai from his hands, and invites him inside. He agrees, but then learns that Kurenai is not at home. Her mother doesn’t know where she is, only that Raido and Genma picked her up.

Before he has the time to stop himself, he tells Kurenai’s mother, “I was thinking about Mirai’s birthday.”

 

* * *

 

It was officially his stupidest idea. Ino went overboard, Shikamaru tried to tell her that they are in a state of war, and she just shrugged and said all the more reason.

Kurenai probably hates being forced to endure it, but at least Mirai is having fun. Sai is making her animals of ink, even Shino shows a bit of understanding and summons some butterflies and fireflies around her.

They push him out, Team 8 - aggressively, they seem to be offended that he is monopolizing their leader’s daughter, and so, with a bit of dread, Shikamaru goes out to seek Kurenai. Maybe he should apologize to her, but he definitely needs to find a way to sneak her out of here, if she is hating every moment of it.

She is nowhere at the party, the headache begins, he craves to go to some quiet spot after all the conversations and congratulations he is forced to endure, and then he realizes that it might not be such a bad thought, after all.

And there she is. She turns to him, sensing the presence.

“Mirai?” - she says out loud.

“Over there,” - he gestures vaguely, and sends her the thought of Mirai being the center of everyone’s attention.

“She’d like that,” - Kurenai says, humour present. She sits back on her hands, and he is the one to approach her. It’s been a year when their poses were mirrored. The last time, they reconciled. He hopes for the same outcome today.

But Shikamaru thinks it is unlikely. Kurenai has probably understood everything when she remembered just what he did when she was dying, how he kissed her.

Still, he approaches her.

He sits down next to her. This autumn is warmer than the one before.

If only the moment could be frozen - of them two alone, in the last illusion of peace, never broken by words.

He wants to apologize, but what to say - I’m sorry that I fell for you, that I can’t unlove you.

She sighs, and then does unimaginable - she bends her head onto his shoulder. He freezes in shock.

One of her hands goes to hug him from behind, she tries to convey something with that touch, but Shikamaru doesn’t understand anything, he is too busy trying not to pop the illusion.

“I’m sorry, Shikamaru,” - she says, voice that is tenderness itself, but that isn’t new.

He can’t speak, but opens his mind a little. She answers his confusion, "I’ve been very very tired, that’s all.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t quite dare, but he lets go of his tension, not quite melting into her the way he wants, but relaxing against her.

He can’t relax fully, though. The control has to be, for everything in her - her skin, her touch, her breath, her hair form his enemies. His thoughts are blocked. It might’ve been easier with the distance between them, but he will never put it back.

 

* * *

 

He is spending a nice day with Chouji, they are eating at his favourite place when Ino haunts them down. She is angry, but she sits to demand for more food. She eats at long last sating her appetite, her diet is stupidiest thing she’s ever done, and that’s Ino. She’s the queen of stupid decisions.

They have to order so much food, Shikamaru plans on waiving the check to Inoichi. There’s no way any one of them can afford Ino’s appetite.

Little anyone except them three know that Ino is the one who eats more than Chouji. Well, she did, until she realized she is a girl. Though Sakura, Shikamaru’s seen, eats like a normal person, and even more so because she needs a lot of protein to build her muscles, so maybe it’s not a girl’s thing, but a pretty girl’s thing. Anyhow, Ino's also weaker because of it, and jeopardized the entire team, which Shikamaru told her many times of. She’s eased away from the diet when Sasuke left the village, but then doubled on it once Sai joined Team 7.

So, it’s not hard to pin Ino with the question, “How’s Sai?”

She gives it out by becoming still and becoming more mad at the same time. Shikamaru, as usual, is right in his guesses.

“That fucking moron,” - she replies with her mouth full.

“Oh, Ino, but I thought…” - Chouji begins, because he can’t stand for anyone to be offended in front of him, and Shikamaru shuts him up with a hand to his mouth. Ino is on murder-spree. They are lucky she got distracted with the food.

She probably looked for them only because she needs Shikamaru to create a strategy of how to murder Sai, which is very typical Ino. It is nice to know that all the girls he knows take break ups as a green card for murder, but he guesses that’s the outcome of raising war-machines out of children.

Nari did try to murder him, which, ironically, Temari prevented her from doing. Shiho, who is a bit farther from the ninja world, on the other hand, only downed glass full of water on him when they were in the crowded restaurant. And then broke that glass on Shikamaru’s head. It might’ve been an accident, she is an incurable clutz, but Shikamaru likes to think that it wasn’t. Nothing like a stray from the pattern to give you a headache.

“Make him jealous,” - Shikamaru suggests to Ino, a plan forming in his head. She is tender enough after the fight to be a clay in Shikamaru’s hands. Ino has two settings for him - she considers everything he does, all his suggestions, his general presence something that she needs to fight constantly, or, when she is vulnerable, she turns to him like he is the answer to all the questions. The trick is to use both of these settings but also to know which one she has at the moment.

Ino doesn’t ask him, but her eyes narrow on him. It is a downer from her initial plan, Shikamaru knows - she probably wanted to find the three of them and attack Team 7, crush all of them (Sai because of whatever’s trouble they are having, Sakura because, well, they are the archenemies, and Naruto because he is Naruto), find Sasuke and walk hand in hand with him over Sai and Sakura’s graves. Which is a solid plan that Shikamaru could, in his mind, entertain until she’d be sated, but, first, he has a better plan that, most importantly, will be beneficial to him, second, even in his mind will be impossible - their team is left orphaned while Team 7 has the steady protection of Kakashi to make any imaginary battle between their teams impossible to be fair to them.

“Date you?” - she asks, doubtful and disgusted. That actually might be a solid plan B, Shikamaru thinks. But his plan A is better and more important.

Before he has the time to explain, Chouji jumps in,

“Why don’t you just talk to Sai?”

To which Ino looks at him with more disgust at that suggestion. Shikamaru wants to laugh at Chouji’s innocence - for Ino to talk things over? But he doesn’t. There is something endearing about Chouji’s purity, without him in their team, he and Ino would’ve been long past redemption.

“I want to hear Shikamaru’s plan,” - she answers stubbornly, and before Chouji has the time to pinch his clear conscience further upon them and shame them out of their machiavellianism, she adds, threatening, “I’ll date you instead.”

That shuts Chouji good and nice. He is too scared to even move or breathe too loudly, and hides in the corner, sucking the meat of the rib.

Shikamaru makes sure to smile at Chouji to say that everything’s alright, everything’s under control, they aren't planning on murdering anybody.

And then he turns to Ino, and starts the business, “So you know Genma?”

Ino gets the most ridiculous awe-struck, mouth-opening, panting out face. Her tone itself is changing to become deeper.

“Oh yes, I know Genma,” - she says his name with reverence.

Plan seems solid, but, for some reasons, Shikamaru thinks that he needs to work out that murdering plan.

 

* * *

 

Forget the murder plan. Which is completely unrelated to the fact that Hokage’s guard platoon is apparently only hiring the best of the best. No, Shikamaru has a better plan. Also, Ino is useless.

 

* * *

 

He is staying late in Hokage’s office, feeling bitter. For all his reconciliation with Kurenai, he sees her no more than before. All because of that stupid breeding war that steals everything from him. She now occasionally joins Mirai on her weekly visits to Nara residency, but Kurenai is so tired, Shikamaru feels guilty for stealing the only time she’s had to be alone. She sits for long time before Mirai, and he sees that she is only half-awake, and not at all ready to have a conversation with him, so he doesn’t impose. He thought that once Mirai got past that one year celebration, things would become easy, but apparently, that isn’t the case. Not enough, at least. He’s never seen Kurenai, or, in fact anyone, carrying that type of fatigue around them. He’d be afraid for her health - what’s with her paling skin, dark circles, and exhaustion of every muscle, had he not known that she is a single mother to hyper-active child.

He still wants to ask Tsunade to check on Kurenai, but he knows she does it, not needing his advice.

Raido and Iwashi leave soon after, for the mission he and Tsunade manage to outline, which leaves him alone in the office with the Fifth and Genma.

Long night stretches as they wait for those two to bring the intel back to the village. Tomorrow’s day work depends on it.

The tension is screaming, each day in the war became this tension of awaiting the horror, or the horror itself.

“How’s Ino?” - Genma asks him. They are laying on the far ends of the office - he on one sofa, Genma on the other. Tsuande sits behind her table. Genma is humoured, and his question betrays layers of innuendoes. There is nothing Shikamaru loves than being the center of the joke. Especially of Genma’s joke.

“Great,” - he answers, grudgingly. Ino and Genma are now friends, which obviously, is the ideal outcome of his plan, and Shikamaru doesn't wish to go back in time and blow his brains out before he’s suggested that, not at all.

Tsunade looks at them two, feeling all the history beneath the words, but, hopefully, not understanding it. She is too straight-forward to pick up nuances.

“Is there a love triangle between you two?” - Tsunade asks, lunges in as usual. - “I thought you were dating her,” - she turns to Genma, - “no?”

Genma smiles. Handsomely, Shikamaru admits with an eye roll.

“She’s too young for me,” - he says, moving the toothpick.

Before Shikamaru has the time to think, he says, irked, “No, she isn’t.”

Which gets both Tsunade and Genma to look at him with equal gazes - pity and humour mixed. Great, Shikamaru thinks, fighting against heat on his cheeks.

He is fairly sure Ino knows nothing about Kurenai, so Genma didn’t get that from her. But it is, Shikamaru thinks, expected. He hopes that it is only that Genma is exceptionally observant and psychologically sharp, and not because he pays close attention to Kurenai and her life, like Shikamaru dreads.

But how Tsunade understood it? He is sure that no one would want to gossip with the Fifth. Is he really that transparent? Shikamaru thinks that he and Ino will need to start dating as soon as possible.

They take mercy on him, and move on. Tsunade asks Genma, all three of them are eager to talk lightly, to at least in some way to dissipate the tension that would otherwise grip them, “So you have age preferences?”

“Very strict ones,” - he answers, joke on the ready.

“Which are?”

“Well, just how old are you, Hokage?” - he shoots.

Shikamaru fights the impulse to cringe, but Tsunade laughs. Shikamaru calms himself thinking that it’d probably never work on Kurenai, but then what does he know about Kurenai’s preferences. He can imagine Asuma being cheesy when he was wooing her.

“I’m afraid, you’re not my type,” - Tsunade says. Shikamaru wonders how much is Genma joking, but then thinks it is ridiculous.

“And what’s your type?” - Genma asks with a note of finality that to Shikamaru sounds as if implying that she knows their types now.

“My first real crush was Orochimaru,” - Tsunade answers, placing herself with humbleness forward for them to have fun at her expense.

Shikamaru laughs, but Genma holds his face and says solemnly, “So was mine.”

Tsunade laughs, and asks, “Was he now?”

Genma doesn’t even twitch, “Oh yes. Had to protect the Third Hokage while being rock hard.”

 

* * *

 

Shikamaru waits for Genma, as they make their way out of the office, after long torturous night, both Iwashi and Raido are under Hokage’s care with their injuries. Genma, Shikamaru sees, is filled with good mood. His teammates are alive.

His eyes sparkle when he sees Shikamaru.

“How’s Kurenai?” - he asks him gently. If Shikamaru was more awake he would be able to linger on all the implications of that phrase. Genma knows, he has to repeat himself. It sounds like he tries to sooth Shikamaru’s jealousy by that question, showing that he is the one with the knowledge of Kurenai. But Shikamaru would love to know just what Genma thinks of her.

“Did Raido tell you?” - he asks, exasperated, but also, weirdly, soothed. If Genma knows, by the fact that they are friends he won’t date her. Not without telling about it to Shikamaru first. Maybe, it’ll even prevent him from falling for her, even if for respect for him. There are so many women available to Genma.

“No, I don’t think he knows,” - Genma smiles, and Shikamaru realizes belatedly, that it is because he confirmed his suspicions with his question.

But he also now knows that he isn’t as transparent as he feared he is, which is a relief.

Genma watches him, like he is entertaining. He says, next, teasing, “I think that Raido’s had a crush on Kurenai when they were in the same team.”

Which is something Shikamaru has suspected, too.

“So what’s Raido's type?” - he asks, more to entertain Genma than out of the need to gather intel. Kurenai and Raido were part of the same team, there is no plan that could win against that.

Genma laughs, and then looks at the waking sky above. Not a single star seen, except for the huge one rising on the horizon.

“I think we all share our type,” - and Shikamaru wonders just how much of what Genma said back in the office was a joke.

“So,” - Shikamaru says, uncertain, - “older women in position of power?”

Genma looks at him, still smiling, and shrugs.

“Beautiful older women in position of freakish power,” - he says, and Shikamaru’s mind clicks.

 

* * *

 

When days later he advises Tsunade to send Genma to Kirikagure, she looks at him, and Shikamaru has a prickling she sees through him.

Same feeling he has with Genma when jounin finds him before his mission. He even asks, before parting, “Mizukage, right?”

“I heard she’s beautiful,” - Shikamaru shrugs. It is hard to be embarrassed when Genma seems to hold no grudges against being used in Shikamaru’s schemes, entertained even.

“And you don’t want to send Raido with me?” - Genma moves the toothpick to another corner.

Shikamaru doesn’t want to explain everything, least of all just how much Kurenai needs Raido. He isn’t just a terrible flirt, like Genma, he is her dearest friend, and the only person left alive of her group. He is also not as attractive as Genma.

So instead he shrugs, no.

“Right,” - Genma says.

And then, as he is leaving, as if remembering something, he turns and adds, “I’d be more worried about Kakashi, by the way.”

And Shikamaru is left right there, under the shadow of the tree, trying to think if that was a joke.

 

* * *

 

Genma thinks he deserves to needle Shikamaru a bit. After all, a chuunin a decade younger presumes to manipulate him in his schemes? Just who does he think he is?

He has half a mind to share the joke with Kakashi, but then who knows where he’d send Kakashi to? Shikamaru just might leave entire village jouninless if they are to press him.

He thinks about Kurenai, a half formed crush on her was there with Genma since the academy, nothing serious, only appreciation for somebody disciplined and kind, and also somebody who evidently, at some point, liked him. He’s had a joke always ready to remind Kurenai of her probably long-forgotten crush on him, the one she’s had when she was too little to remember it, but that might’ve turned into something serious, he knew it - with somebody as kind and gentle as Kurenai is, one always had to be on the look-out of falling too deeply, and there was always Asuma, and later was grief for Asuma.

Mei Terumi, he says to himself, instead, shaking all past visions and unrealized imagines. The Fifth Mizukage. Already, he feels inside himself some kind of excitement drumming the beat of his heart that fits him more than the gentleness that Kurenai awakens by her need in it.

 

* * *

 

He has no chance against Kakashi, Shikamaru thinks, after he becomes the Sixth Hokage. Like, yes, the war, is over, thank fuck for that. But Kakashi becomes the Hokage.

All these months, long laborious months of war’s last efforts, constant terror, he simply had no time to think about Genma’s caution to him. He sort of wrote it off as ridiculous tease, the last joke from resident clown. He’s had little time to even think of Kurenai and Mirai, apart from being glad that it is another day, another battle, another catastrophe done, gone, won and they are still alive.

He also thinks of them constantly, but in a way that is hard to retract once the war comes to the end. Everything he did was for them. He thinks that the reason why he was able to keep going during that war was only because he knew they were close.

And now it’s over, and now nothing endangers them. And now Kakashi becomes the hero of the village, along with his team, and he becomes Hokage, and Genma’s words come back full force.

 

* * *

 

“Did Asuma ever want to become Hokage?” - he asks in the evening, after Mirai falls asleep. The miracle of the terrors of war was that Kurenai got better. Maybe, it is because Mirai is growing, war or not, and that eased Kurenai’s burden. She is still tired and under-slept, but this is no longer than bone-deep fatigue that was there before.

Now, as the village succumbs to the first snow that seems to cleanse them all from terrors of war, he and Kurenai got a habit of talking after Mirai falls asleep. They also visit more often, but still Kurenai lets Mirai sleep over only once a week. Shikamaru keeps the little house heated for the winter for such visits.

Kurenai is looking through the window at the snow falling, her hands warming up on the cup of tea. Dressed in knit-wear she is the picture of comfort, and Shikamaru sees that even though she’s heard him, she takes her time to answer because she tries to spread out the moment.

She turns to look at him, before answering and smiles at him softly. Shikamaru fights to control himself. He forces himself to breathe evenly.

“No, I don’t think so,” - she draws. She looks beautiful in the soft light of sunset. They still haven’t turned the lights on, and that semi-darkness is comfortable, and just a little too private.

“It’s a hard profession to romantize when you lose your father to it, no?” - she continues. Their conversation are always this languid, and when it gets darker it is harder to hold on to the lines drawn between them ordinarily, and nothing becomes forbidden. Well, except one thing. Kurenai reminds him of it with her next question.

“How’s Ino?” - Kurenai asks with such parental gentleness. Shikamaru always tells himself not to seek it, but he seeks it nonetheless - the sign of jealousy, but it is never there, and so he only sets himself for eternal heartbreak.

“She is good,” - weirdly, their fake arrangement that was all plan and no feelings at all, seemed to progress out of their hands. He isn’t in love with her, but that is also no longer a strictly business relationship either. Which means that the fights are all real. Half the scratches on his body are from that, another half the scratches comes from the reason why he endures those fights and doesn’t break the agreement.

He is already resigned to live his life with this love for Kurenai, he might as well get comfortable in his torture. He also thinks that it’d be comfortable for Kurenai that way, if he isn’t around pathetically alone, pining for her. He might as well get sex.

“Your fathers must be happy,” - she says. There is always that weird streak of humour that Kurenai has when she speaks about his father that Shikamaru doesn’t quite understand. She is always humoured by his father, even if he is far from being good-mannered.

“I guess they are,” - he answers, doubtful. He hasn’t really thought of it. - “My mother doesn’t really like Ino, though,” he says for the sake of saying something, to keep the conversation going.

His mother doesn’t like any of his girlfriends, his mother generally doesn’t like lots of things.

Kurenai smiles yet again that smile full of humour he is missing.

“Does she?” - she says, and looks again out of the window. Her face is now only outlined by the light. He wonders if he should turn the lamp on. What does she think of?

The last thought jumps from him and Shikamaru sees that Kurenai feels his question, but she only shakes her head, refusing to answer.

“Asuma wanted for you to become a Hokage though,” - she says instead, returning to his initial question.

“Yes, I know,” - he smiles. He a Hokage, what a joke.

He still thinks of a way to ask Kurenai if she fancies the current Hokage, when he plants, “Genma told me he likes people in the position of power,” and only when Kurenai turns to him, surprised, he realizes his mistake.

“So you’re telling me all I had to do was become a Hokage?” - she asks, laughing, but at herself and not at his mistake.

Don’t show it, Shikamaru wills himself. Not even a wince, he knows, and forces himself to smile back at her, disconnecting from his emotions.

He stands up to turn the light on, while they blink getting used to it, Shikamaru throws all his hurt away, and goes to steep the water for tea.

“Have you thought of it?” - that question is so dangerous to ask when the light is bright, but Shikamaru still wants to know, and while he stands with her back to her, he continues, - “You could date Genma, if you wanted.”

Genma is taking a holiday in Kirikagure, so Shikamaru adds, “Or someone else.”

Then he realizes how that sounds, and hurries to add, “I heard Kakashi might be…” he doesn’t continue, that’s too strong of a seed he’s planted.

He is never reckless. He never makes mistakes in his plans. But he can’t get a single thing right with Kurenai.

When he turns, tense with silence, he sees that Kurenai isn’t hurt or mad or anything like that, thank god.

She smiles at him, but in the light it is apparent that she is tired. That same bone-deep tiredness that seems to haunt her this past year.

“No,” - she says. - “No.”

That’s all she says. And because in the past years Shikamaru has been training more in genjutsu, he feels the bit of her thought inside her, 'And what, bond with Kakashi over our love to dead people?'

There is something off in her mind, but then he’s noted that she hasn’t been sharing her thoughts ever since she left the hospital. He looks at her, afraid he’s hurt her. But she must’ve been in control of her mind, only showed him what she wanted to show, and smiles at him, again.

“How your father fares now that he is jobless?” - she asks to change the topic.

Strictly speaking, his father isn’t jobless. He’s only lost his place in Hokage’s council with Kakashi getting his people to advice him, same happened to Shikamaru. Technically, there are still many works available for jounin of such high rank. If only he were to take a team of genins under his wing. Which is something his father never opposed to, many people don’t know that. He only doesn’t want to take a team with a girl in it. Which is impossible. So now he is jobless.

“Mother is happy,” - Shikamaru says, dripping with sarcasm. Their house is a war zone these days, and Shikamaru tries to sleep at Ino’s, which in turn makes Yamanaka residency a war zone, so he considers buying himself a property away from his parents.

Kurenai smiles again with that same humour, and Shikamaru is attuned to her brain-waves enough to feel the thought, 'this man specifically married the woman who’d make him feel disappointed in her entire gender.'

And then he flushes hot.

 

* * *

 

“So, Ino?” - Temari joins him on the grass, the snow just melted, but it’s still cold ground to sit on, much less lie on it, like Shikamaru does, but he just came back after exhaustive mission, and wants to watch the clouds and possibly also decompose into the nature.

“Not my favorite topic today,” - he answers.

Temari laughs.

She invites him to her wedding next. Which stirs Shikamaru into sitting up to look at her. Ugh, she is revoltingly happy, he just drops dead again.

“Who is he?” - he asks her, because he can feel her buzzing out of her skin, waiting for him to ask.

And then she tells him. How it was so sudden, she only knows him for thirty-two days, but it is solid, she’s never felt that way. They’ve been on the mission together, on the almost-died type of mission, and Shikamaru wants to say ’suspension bridge effect’, but it’s Temari and she kills for less.

“So yeah,” - she concludes, deliriously happy.

“I hate you.”

“That’s the best thing you could’ve said to me,” - she sparkles more.

“I could use a trip to Suna right now,” - he says next. He is sick of Konoha now. He’ll need to think of something regarding Mirai though.

But Temari is happy about him joining her, she can’t wait to show off her fiance, and maybe bask in the good old triangle tension between her first boyfriend and the last, she arranges everything. He decides on the trip for a week. The wedding is obviously to proceed without delay in just three days, because, apparently, no one around the newly weds have thought to spare them pain of divorcing by stalling the time.

But they look, at the time, nausetingly happy. The wedding is beautiful, Temari’s brothers terrifying as ever, and Suna grand and strong, and almost summer-hot warm.

When he comes back to Konoha he is relieved to see it already blooming with the spring. Ino is jealous of his adventure with Temari and with the fight that they pick up, he truly feels like he is home again.

He remembers the words in the last days he’s spent with Temari, before her wedding,

“That’s so weird, I just got it,” - she suddenly stopped him as they were walking through night desert. It could’ve been his home, he thought then. - “You haven’t said a single degrading thing about woman community in past days, you know that?” and she looked at him with curiosity that was mostly teasing.

“Shut up,” - he’s said weakly, lacking fervour to mean it.

When he first comes back to Konoha, he is uncertain.

He misses Mirai, and he misses Kurenai, and he misses them both like it’s been far longer than a week since he’s seen them. Maybe it is because his latest visits through the winter were so tense, they placed more distance between each other, yet again. It would’ve been so easy if only his love for her had stopped with that first not-fight between them. There was nothing there, of course there weren’t.

Shikamaru even knows that it is his own fault. He is disillusioned in Kurenai, he thought she is without a single mean bone in her body, so he hadn’t expected her to think that. He idolized her, after all.

After picking that thought though, he was unable not to tense around her, after understanding that all that time, she’s laughed at his father.

He’s always felt guilt and even a bit of shame when his father showed Kurenai just what he thought of women, and he always felt like he should protect her better, he knew that she is too sensitive not to pick up all the feelings his father expressed, but he never did.

That thing has been boggling his mind, twisting it, and he can’t make ends of it. What is worse is that he isn’t worried that Kurenai was offended by his father, or that his father had been a source of humour to Kurenai, but that he is so much like his father - was he a running joke, too? Is he?

But, much like a loyal pet, among all those conflicting emotions, there is one he still feels, like a constant drum - he misses Kurenai terribly. She is still the kindest person he’s known, and he craves that as he always does. And he craves her, even if she isn’t all that kind.

 

* * *

 

But it is only by the time Kurenai’s birthday comes around, that Shikamaru feels like everything is back to where it was before, and they fall in their regular routine, and he craves for her and lives with the love for her that is now more sure than ever. Which, in itself, is the sort of pleasant torture that Shikamaru imagines the drugs must be for the addicts - better to be destroyed by her closeness than slowly be sucked of life by the separation.

 

* * *

 

He and Ino break up right before their birthday party. Obviously, best moment to break up.

Kurenai isn’t here, Mirai will have a quiet celebration tomorrow at Sarutobi residency, so Shikamaru doesn’t bother hiding in the woods. Instead he chooses to get properly drunk. The girl invites him to the dance floor, but he can’t dance, so he just plasters to her back, and they grind against each other. Hopefully, neither his father nor Inoichi see anything.

By some time, he is drunk enough not to care about their fathers and their legacys, he drags the girl to the shadow of the trees, and they kiss languidly there, with him drinking from the bottle on every second breath.

In the morning, he awakes in the bed, and he can’t for the life of him say if that’s the same girl that he danced with or not. But he hurries up, and leaves her with hurried kiss on the cheek, tells her to take her time, and runs to Mirai’s birthday party.

Mirai is happy to see him, and, probably, the only one who doesn’t realize that he is terribly hungover, she climbs over him and tells him of her presents, and he watches her babbling and goggling and focuses on entertaining her. Raido is the one who slips him the flask under the table, and even if Shikamaru feels bad about drinking at kid’s birthday, he knows he literally can’t keep going otherwise. Something cherry-like fills him and warms him on the inside and colours the world into something warm and slow.

He watches Kurenai long into the day, excusing it by circling around Mirai. He is too sated, too drunk, too lazy to feel the usual unbeatable pull towards Kurenai, or he is too lazy to fight against it. He doesn’t do anything though. Usually, he can admit it when he is drunk, the thought of sex is never far from his feelings for Kurenai. He doesn’t let himself dwell on it, but right now, because he is sex sated after full night, and he feels like there is nothing in him that wants to jump up at her, he only thinks of it - of her soft skin, kind eyes, desire to touch her, desire to claim her. What he wishes is to be able to hug her from behind, Mirai on her legs, place his head on Kurenai's shoulder, play with Mirai with his hands entangled under Kurenai’s, maybe even teasingly bite her neck - never to bring pain, but maybe to make her laugh. That desire is constant, it changes occasionally, but remains same all the time.

Sometimes he only thinks of him and Kurenai naked together, of owning her body, of lifting it into his, pounding into it, trace her skin, see her fully.

What his drunken sated stupor gives him is the ability to imagine all those pictures and feel completely under control, feel like he doesn’t even have to fight those pictures and the seduction of them. He only wants to keep watching Kurenai. She lets him, and smiles whenever she catches his eyes. He is too lazy to even move them from her face.

He lifts Mirai, and Kurenai comes closer to him and places her palm on his shoulder, standing so close she might be hugging him, his left side feels the warmth of her body. And he thinks - she feels it too. She feels today that at long last he isn’t tense with the fight against her pull, he doesn’t want her too desperately today. Everything might just work.

 

* * *

 

“Shikamaru, aren’t you going to get illnesses that way?” - Chouji asks him when he enters his room after Kira leaves.

Shikamaru stretches and starts lazily dressing up. He has a fairly good hunch Chouji came here to talk about something serious. Shikamaru kind of wishes to just tell him already that he knows and give the blessing, but he is willing to play by Chouji’s rules.

“I have it all under control,” - and he has.

He isn’t loosing his mind here, he wants to tell Chouji, he is as controlled as ever. It is only a way to pass the time, a way to satisfy his desires, and a way to stop panting too loudly in Kurenai’s direction. Which his new way of living allows him to do, and all without painful break-ups and expectations he was forever unable to meet.

Ino has already talked to him about the girls she’s seen him with. She, very elegantly, called him a slut, and seemed satisfied with herself. At least they are already cooled off from their relationships and the consecutive fight that ended it. Took them months, but that was some fight, and now they are almost alright.

Anyhow, Shikamaru cares about the names Ino calls him about a tenth percentage more than he cares about saving the pyrrhocorid bugs, so that didn’t sting, but Shikamaru kind of dreads Chouji’s disapproval. He always feels like a terrible human being to be the one disappointing Chouji. His parents already had the talk with him - his mother hollered over him and his terrible reputation, the disrespect that he somehow manages to show to the entire village in his disgrace of behaviour. Fun stuff. And his father, under his mother’s glare, obediently told him off, but then, later in the night, nudged Shikamaru and said that he is doing everything right, and his pride was almost as bad as his mother’s screams.

He isn’t really embarrassed, though there is a twinge of emotions when Kurenai asks him about this or that girl, and there is something dark like a disapproval and discomfort around her when she does it, but there is such a weird mix of emotions when he is around Kurenai, it is better not to think of them at all.

What he really feels is actually surprise that is laced with pride.

Who knew he’d be that popular with girls? Like, Sasuke is back in the village, but, no, Shikamaru is the one who gets all the girls. Who would’ve thought.

He doesn’t exactly know what makes him popular with them, and suspects he doesn’t want to know, but it isn’t too hard to find a new girl for the night through the months that go by.

He and Chouji go for a walk, and Chouji tells him something Shikamaru knew for a while.

“Ino and I…” - and then he stops, thinking how to phrase it better. - “We might be…”

“Yeah,” - Shikamaru nods. Chouji, bless him, thinks he needs his approval because he dated Ino only few months back. Only Chouji could be that pure as to ask his permission to date his ex-girlfriend about whom he knows he doesn’t care. Chouji is the only person who knows about his feelings for Kurenai, whom Shikamaru told freely about it. And, still, Chouji dreads talking to him about Ino.

“That’s great,” - Shikamaru says, meaning it.

When later at night their team meet up for barbecue, he watches with a pleasure of a third-wheel - uncomfortable, but also receiving the satisfying glance into the private life of others, he notes Ino’s appetite.

When Chouji goes to bathroom, Ino says only one thing to him about those new relationships, “One fat joke, ever, about me, him, or our potential children, and I’ll murder you.”

Which Shikamaru is offended she even feels the need to spell to him, but he only agrees, “Fair.”

 

* * *

 

He visits Kurenai in her new apartment, the one he helped them move in about a month ago and notes that all the boxes are now unpacked. Shit, he actually came here today to help her. He hopes Raido helped her out or her mother, there were too many of them.

She is doing something in her bedroom into which she hid after she let him in, and Shikamaru takes his time watching the place. It is neat and white, too small to his taste, but definitely a progress from Kurenai’s mother’s house where you couldn’t help but bump into the walls. And only for the two of them. It might be better, actually, than to have too big of a space, Shikamaru thinks. This way Mirai will never stray too far from her mother.

“Where’s Mirai?” - he asks in the direction of the bedroom.

“My team took her with them, I think they’re going snow-sliding,” - she hollers back. She comes out the bedroom in just a minute and invites him to see it. It is a darker room - there is vanity, bed and Mirai’s bed nearby. It already smells like them. Bathroom door is just by the bed. Yes, the apartment is tiny, but it seems that Kurenai is proud of it, and Shikamaru thinks he already likes the place far more than his own home.

He likes the economy of space and of decor - there’s nothing for the eye to stay on, nothing to tire of. He likes that Kurenai hadn’t thought too hardly about the interior and it shows - plain walls, wooden floor, no decorations, only the necessities.

“Did your team help you unpack?” - he asks as they go to the kitchen. He’s actually eaten before, but doesn’t decline when Kurenai offers to heat some left-overs. She doesn’t cook, Shikamaru knows it, only orders the food, or even dines out. He thinks if he is ever to live by himself, he should do it similarly to Kurenai. Saving up the energy and not waste it out. He’s thought being an adult is something exhaustive, with all those cleanings, bills, cooking, but now he understands that it is only because all the adults he knows are wasting too much energy on trivialities.

“Yes, they did,” - Kurenai smiles. They have to settle on the couch in the living room, seeing as there is no table or chairs in the kitchen.

Shikamaru eats, uninspired, and lets himself enjoy more the pull and tug of talking with Kurenai. It’s been a while since they were alone. Mirai sleeps little and less these days and whenever he sees her she demands him to play with her, Mirai’s presence is growing, which is nice - she is bubbly and absolutely funniest, but he missed Kurenai terribly in that time.

The winter has settled surely over Konoha, days are short, and Shikamaru feels even lazier than usual these weeks. He hasn’t also been exactly fucking til his brain would melt these days, and so the desire for Kurenai takes over him.

She sit close to him, their feet almost entangling, the position that almost brings back the first time he sat with Kurenai on the same couch, a lifetime ago, when she was pregnant. She is eating leisurely, it is a sight pleasant to watch, watches him, and tells him the latest news, her voice cascading around him. Her dark hair are loosened on the back of the couch. That terrible tiredness is gone, she is radiating health. The desire to kiss her is there as omnipresent as always, but he has it under control, after so many years of practice.

“I’m thinking about going back to work,” - Kurenai tells him. He’s suspected that moving to the apartment was the sign of other changes. Shikamaru nods.

“When?” - he asks her, and thinks how much he wants her.

“Soon. I was going to wait until Mirai is three, but I think I need to do it sooner,” - Kurenai answers.

“Is it the money?” - Shikamaru is all behind Kurenai going to work again, but if it is only for money… He tries to calculate his savings.

“Don’t you dare,” - Kurenai kicks him gently. She leaves her feet there, touching his knee.

The desire is so old, he’s felt that one before. He knows that Kurenai can feel him tensing, but she doesn’t comment on it. Shikamaru wonders if she is thinking about their first fight, too.

“No, really, I want to, can’t wait, actually,” - Kurenai continues without acknowledging the pause they both took in.

“Your team must miss you,” - Shikamaru says, and manages to finish the phrase when he feels Kurenai’s legs settle more surely in his lap. He places his hands on them, without thinking, and then awaits judgement.

Kurenai smiles instead, tender in the last bits of sunlight, more beautiful than can be fair to Shikamaru. He can’t stop his hands. He massages her feet, and watches, perplexed, as she relaxes further, how her face shows pleasure.

“Yeah, that feels good,” - she says and Shikamaru has to move her feet a bit away from the part of his body that rises with the compliment. She sounds the way Shikamaru has never thought he’d be allowed to hear her sounding.

He chooses to focus downward on his hands and their movements. The fact that he is touching Kurenai is not lost on him. He presses into one spot and Kurenai almost moans, and Shikamaru has to stop himself from pressing into that spot again and harder. She scoots closer to her legs, and to him.

A moment suspended in tension - they are close, so so close, closer than they've ever been. He knows that she might do it for a reason that isn’t the one from his fantasies, but once he feels her body nearer, her breath on his cheek, he just moves up and hugs her, almost seeing Kurenai reaching for him with the same urgency towards him, he drops her back on the couch with him on top of her. She hugs him back just as intently - all their bodies connecting, touching, maddening him. He places his nose into the hook of her neck and inhales her smell. His hands touch, touch, touch everything they’ve always dreamed of touching. He squeezes her, presses his palms into her skin, too harshly than he’d want to touch Kurenai, he dreamed of being gentle with her, but he is so afraid, in the next moment the dream is going to evaporate, he doesn’t want to waste the chance. He lifts his head and watches absolutely enthralled as he sees his hands go over Kurenai’s body - up and down. He is too scared to look her in the face, afraid of what he’d see in her eyes.

She is the one to lift his face, holding him by his jaw. He thinks she wants to stop him, he expects their first fight to be recreated. But she doesn’t.

The look in her eyes is hazy, raptured by looking at his face. He groans, caught between his desires - can he kiss her? She moves as a reply to his voice and entangles him further, her legs hug his torso and her body presses into his dick.

“Ow,” - he thinks she murmurs, surprised, and then moves her body with more intent against his arousal.

“Kurenai,” - he tries to say, but she already brings his face down and he goes willingly. He kisses her with desperation, lost against sensations to truly control himself.

His hands can’t stop touching her. She is wearing a dress, her apartment is warm enough by the merit of being small, and so when that dress drags upward, he feels the skin on her legs. He wants so much - he wants to kiss that skin on her legs thoroughly, he wants to dig his hands deeper into her dress and touch her there. And he can’t stop his brain from thinking, and he knows that if that isn’t a genjutsu trap, then he doesn’t understand what exactly is going on. And he is too scared to ask Kurenai to explain, he is sure that if he is to move wrongly she will awaken from that madness and push him out.

So he only wants this moment to last just a little longer, he has a feeling that this moment is a bubble that will pop with the wrong breath.

He surrenders to Kurenai, no matter how hard that is for him, tries to will her to move him where she wants him, even if he knows that once he stops desiring her the spell might burst, too.

But Kurenai doesn’t stop. There is something in her frantic movements that tells Shikamaru that she is as afraid as he is to have a clear moment, to have a moment to think. They are both afraid that if they are to stop, even for a breath, she’ll grasp the usual clarity and will understand the sheer madness of the moment.

So he releases all his desires upon her, hoping that in the storm of his wants, she won’t have the time to think of anything.

He lifts her legs on his shoulders and kisses the under-knee, all the while her hands are still entangled in him, touching him where she can - his shirt is already open and she spreads one hand on his chest, another one she holds in his head. Her dress drags up, and when Shikamaru moves his torso against her, so that at least in some way he’d be able to subdue the fire in his pants, he feels the wetness of her underwear against naked skin of his belly. He moans out loud. What should he do? He wants to drop down and see her wetness, it is for him, isn’t it?

But Kurenai makes the decision for him, and she drags his head down and forces a kiss on him. It is a toe-curling wet kiss, she holds him with such strength like she needs to force him into it. He ends up moaning into her mouth, struggling for breath, but she, thankfully is undeterred and never stops. Shikamaru moves his hips against hers, answering to the movement of the kiss, his hardness against her wet underwear, and Kurenai stops, and Shikamaru fears that this is it - this is the moment she recognizes this all for a madness.

But she just moves away from him, and he almost wants to beg her into not doing it, but she says, “bedroom,” and he sinks into her with relief.

And then, without, giving her the time to think again, he lifts her up. The angle is awkward, and he has to shift his feet onto the ground, but all the trainings he underwent preparing for jounin test make the rest easy. As they stand, Shikamaru doesn’t waste the time and he kisses her as they walk into the bedroom, but she moves and he places her on the ground. He can’t stop hugging her, he kisses her neck and bites it, trying to convey that no, no, she shouldn’t think, she can’t refuse him now. But she places her hand on his shoulder and moves him back with a force, and he tries to kiss her hand, touches the length of her arm. And then he notices that she has focused her chakra.

He hugs her yet again, questions filling him, and she says, “I’m just telling Shino to drop Mirai at Sarutobi’s” which are definitely the best words Shikamaru ever heard in all his life.

She, at long last, surrenders to his hug, and they fall onto the bed. Kurenai almost giggles at his eagerness and he can’t find it in himself to be ashamed, so happy to make her laugh. She undresses him, tugging his shirt up, but he’d rather touch her, kiss her which is what he does. Though once Kurenai drags her dress away from her he grows appreciation for her actions.

He goes down, enraptured yet again by that wet patch on her underwear. He can’t not have a plan, and he has one even now, in the moment that near shuts up his brain. He makes himself comfortable between her hips, brings his face down and licks her through the underwear. His plan is to bring Kurenai pleasure.

 

* * *

 

The night goes on and on and on. Shikamaru knows that once he stops the miracle will disappear, so he forces it to keep happening, he touches her in the moments between, kisses her, kisses her hair, hugs her, leaves at least his fingers inside her. And he never stops, he doesn’t dare, he knows he can’t stop. He exhausts her. At the end, while the sun rises up, she is only laying on her stomach, letting him take what he needs from her, half-asleep, but her eyes that look at him through that veil of tiredness, because of all their extortions, because of all the bliss, orgasms, with same patient kindness, tender gentleness. He himself is so tired, he only moves slowly, only can move slowly, every movement bringing a pleasant sting of over-used muscles, and though he fights it, has fought it for hours on the end, he falls asleep on top of her, in the middle of the movement.

 

* * *

 

Shikamaru wakes first. The bed is all crumpled, the smell is unmistakeable. He watches Kurenai as she sleeps and the sight fills him with such content. He thinks that maybe he can recreate the magic of yesterday. If only he never lets her think, they’ll just remain here, doing same over and over again and again and the spell will never be broken, she’ll be forever inside the bubble of his love. He doesn’t dare, afraid he’ll wake her and she will remember what exactly has happened yesterday and explain everything to him. He knows everything she might say, knows every reasonable explanation, he doesn’t want them.

He falls asleep again and the next time wakes when Kurenai jumps out of bed, saying, “Mirai!”

He hears the voices in the hallway, but Kurenai manages to say thanks and goodbye in a record short time, and he hears them both, mother and daughter move around the kitchen, talking.

He takes his time standing up and getting dressed, sure he doesn’t want to hear whatever Kurenai has to say to him.

He hears her thought, and it is a simple word - 'Don’t,' directed specifically at him. He’s expected that. What he doesn't expect is the nature itself of Kurenai’s mind. He picks up something wrong with, he can tell it, without really understanding what that is. And then he gets what it is - it springs from tired, hopeless and dark mind that he could never recognize for Kurenai’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Third Chapter comes out on June, 25th


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter: postpartum depression, mention of sex with a minor (17 year old with a 20 year old)

When Mirai is about one, Kurenai finds the words that calm her and explain at long last at least something.

She leaves Mirai at Sarutobi’s, and goes to the library, not knowing what to do with her free time. She touches the backs of the books, it’s been so long since she read anything. Even before Mirai, her job was too demanding to read anything for pleasure. So now she doesn’t even remember how the choosing happens. But when she was a child, she loved being at the library. She and her mother used to spend the days at any sheltered community places, enjoying the warmth, preparing for the long night ahead.

Kurenai didn’t know she could make friends, she hasn’t even known anything about friends, until she read about them. And by that time, she already has developed a taste for loneliness, it was a skill she mastered, unlike the socializing skill she never did. So she read. She read and read and read, and then forgot all about it when she was assigned into her first team. Both Raido and Asuma were dragging her around, showing her the many exciting things children could be doing, so she forgot all about the books.

She goes through shelves, lost, but trying to enjoy her free time. It is hard to do when she feels the guilt. She is already a terrible mother, and now she also presumes to enjoy the free time she doesn’t deserve?

The book she touches is mother helping handbook. She doesn’t really want to think of herself as of mother, at least for the few precious hours that she has, but she can’t not.

Mirai has a rush near her mouth and Kurenai doesn’t know what to do with it, so she flips the pages, looking for an answer.

As she is flipping, she goes through the chapter that is called - Postpartum Depression, and flips further. But the words are already stuck inside her. She breathes out. She closes the book. She places it back on the shelf. And then leans her head on the shelf, words pulsing inside her.

She’s known of that condition, at some point even wondered if her mother had one after giving birth to her. But throughout all the year since Mirai’s birth, she hasn’t thought of those words.

Kurenai has experienced a lot in her life. Through loneliness of her childhood, loveless care of her mother, teenage years spent during the war, she’s experienced death of her beloved husband, the first person to love her, and nothing was harder than becoming a mother. She’s had a fairly easy pregnancy, from what she can compare, she’s experienced terrible deadly labor of giving birth to her child. But the year that she’s spent caring for the child was the only thing in her life she’s feared she had no strength to endure.

At the beginning she was blissful. When she woke up in the hospital and understood that she is alive, that Mirai is alive as well, she was joyous. In that moment, even Asuma’s death seemed to fade away, and she could see the future ahead of her when she would finally not be grieving for him, but would only feel love and happiness that he’s been with her, that he’s given her a child. Mirai is so like him, and she was his spitting image from the first day.

She felt that not only she could endure her motherhood, but that she would enjoy it, she felt so happy to be a mother. Sakura explained to her the healing chakra of Pain, and that it was filling her and healing both her and Mirai. It evaporated slowly, so Kurenai didn’t notice it. At first, there was the hospital, and the isolated life of a single mother. All she wished for in that time was to sleep a bit more, other than that she was so full and happy. She was happy to be left alone with Mirai, she watched her daughter like a miracle she is, and was afraid to miss on something. Sometimes, she would not let herself sleep, but rather watch over Mirai - her little hands, tiny fingers, soft legs and little toes. God, the nails on those toes! She felt there was something between her and Mirai that was holy. Mirai looked at her like she was everything, and she looked at Mirai and couldn’t drink it up.

That’s why it was so cruel for that joy and love that she’s felt for her child to start drain away from her. Oh no, she loves her child. But it is sometimes hard.

Kurenai knew loneliness, but it was nothing compared to what she’s felt when she was left alone to care for Mirai. Mirai, she felt, was tyrannizing in her demand of her, she, the fragile little child who could do so little, was trapping her, in way that was more than physical. Mirai demanded for Kurenai to give her everything to her - her body, her mind, her soul, her care, her past and her future. At first she was joyous to be needed in such way, she felt weird connection to all other mothers who’ve been doing that since prehistoric times. It was as if such sacrifice was natural. Until it wasn’t.

The leave of Pain’s chakra coincided with her moving in with her mother, and so Kurenai thought it was her mother’s fault that she’s lost the joy of the motherhood. And, maybe, biology or not, there was something that did indeed change when Kurenai moved in with her mother. She doesn’t really think she falls too neatly into the explanation provided by postpartum depression chapter.

She’s thought herself to be natural at motherhood, but realized only a little later that it was actually the nurses in the hospital and later, unnoticed, Shikamaru’s mother, who’s helped her nurture her daughter. And then, when she’s moved in with her mother, her mother refused to help Kurenai unless she was asked. Kurenai did everything wrong. What was worse - her mother was so good in her care. A child that was wailing in her mother’s arms would fall asleep in no time. Kurenai felt betrayed - she was Mirai’s mother, but it was evident Mirai preferred her grandmother’s care. All that great sacrifice that Kurenai was giving to Mirai, and for all of it to be redundant?

But she held on. In her mother’s tiny house she stumbled with her daughter and struggled not to be entirely useless, but she was loosing her patience as she slept less, as her body lost the last bits of healing chakra - and she was suddenly so exhausted, constantly, and the irritation as well as the tension between Kurenai and her mother rose above the child. Her mother’s words needled her just when she least expected them, and she has suspected her mother was suffering too from Kurenai’s strange hard shell that she never understood for what it was - the desire to be alone, and not the selfish pride. That is was a shell against the world, and not the unease for her mother.

She often wondered if it were better for her and Mirai to find another home, anything to be away from such atmosphere of discontent.

But she couldn’t do it, she knew it. Kurenai would fall asleep in the middle of the day, and then, when she’d wake, she’d feel as if her will was not yet awakened. Kurenai heard of people suffering from paralysis of the body when they awake too suddenly, and pitied them for the terror it might have been - to be trapped inside their body. But hers was the problem that was so different, yet in many ways so similar to that sensation. She wondered if she made that up. Paralysis of will. She could feel and move her body, but felt no desire to do so, felt exhausted, even thinking about standing up. Exhaustion that was unbeatable, like nothing she’s ever known before. Often, she’d only fall asleep for more time.

How to care for an infant when she was unsure if she could rise up from the bed?

The worst feeling was embarrassment and deep shame. She knew that her mother thought that the only problem was that Kurenai was feeling lazy, that it was a choice that she refused to accept. Her mother told her, “This is hard for me, too, you know it?”, trying to say to Kurenai that she’s felt the same way, but only chose to rise up and do her duties. Kurenai didn’t know how to explain to her mother that in truth there was no choice available in those moments.

That first year passed in a haze. It was the longest time in her life, with each day spreading so thinly, she couldn’t see anything beyond it, but then passing as if it never was there.

In the center of it all was Mirai and the love for her daughter that Kurenai sometimes, it felt like, was forcing herself to feel for her daughter.

She’s had Kurenai’s eyes, but barely anything else. In everything she is a little copy of Asuma. From the first days of caring for her daughter, Kurenai understood that. It is even peculiar how a child that small, that helpless could have such a bright character that is exactly like Asuma’s.

She loves that, appreciates nature’s unexpected gift for her. As Mirai grew out of baby’s uncertain features, Kurenai saw that even in her physique she will be much more like Asuma.

She grows to be active, physical, funny. And the last betrayal of her daughter who’s been steadily growing to be less fragile, less helpless has been exactly her nature.

Visits to Sarutobi’s, at first, were only a tribute to Asuma’s family. Kurenai would let Konohomaru hold his little cousin, talk to Asuma’s sister about the changes her niece underwent since the last visit.

Until they weren’t. Mirai loves it at Sarutobi’s. She loves the great residency, the forrest near by, she loves the noise of numerous guests that Sarutobis always have, loves the attention of all those people. She screams and wails when she has to leave and, once she can string some sounds together to make herself understood, she begs Kurenai to let her go there. Kurenai can almost sense the feeling in her infant - Mirai is bored with her.

And Kurenai understands that her quiet attentiveness and her timid gentle love for her daughter is not enough, Mirai wants to be adored by everyone, she wants excitement and noise that Kurenai simply can’t provide to her.

Guiltily, through exceptional guilt, as Mirai turns one, Kurenai feels how such lack of need in her not only frees her, but heals her, too. Kurenai despairs, understanding that this is such a sure sign of her being a terrible mother. Through that understanding, somehow, her motherhood turns to something manageable, something she betters at, she accepts that Mirai needs her less.

Her mind clears, her will turns fire, she is able to shrug off her mother’s needling words. Not always, that’s the thing, but there are days that become almost easy. The words that she finds, ‘postpartum depression’, almost mark the end of it, she feels.

The week that Mirai turns one is almost fully filled with good days, and so Kurenai hides away from the party, trying to preserve her own psyche. When Shikamaru finds her, she is happy to see him, and only when he comes towards her unsure, she understands that through all that year she’s barely talked to him.

He’s changed, she notes. Twenty-one looks good on him - he grew even taller, and Kurenai sees that if his height hadn’t stopped yet he might grow taller than Asuma. The constant dread of war, something that Kurenai barely had the energy to be petrified of, but what added greatly to the despair of her state, has changed even his face. He looks older, she’d be reluctant to call him a boy.

During that year, she felt his absence, but it was also a comfortable absence, absence that allowed her to be interested in something beyond the small house of her mother. Raido told her about the girl Shikamaru dated, Nari or Rina. When she and Raido took Mirai for a stroll across the village, Raido pointed the girl out to her.

“Wow,” - she whispered back to Raido, at the sight of such beauty. Just the girl to get the childish crush for a broken widow out of the system. It felt good to gossip, almost like they were back in the academy.

“I know,” - Raido whispered back. How could she begrudge Shikamaru for being absent when his newest girlfriend looked like that? Kurenai only felt happy that he is experiencing his twenties and not the responsibility he has for Mirai, or the war is preventing him from that. It felt good to know that life was happening still, all around her, that there were, even if not hers, billions of tiny adventures people were undergoing.

It's Raido and Genma who told her later about Shiho. Genma, with a glint in his eyes, said that she is for sure a downer after Shikamaru’s latest girlfriend, but Kurenai felt that Shiho was a good match for him. Shikamaru needed someone smart, she knew it. Nari is a medic, and that required great skills, discipline and abilities, but Shiho, Kurenai knew, is one of the greatest minds of the village.

So she hasn’t really understood that to Shikamaru their distance might’ve seemed to be anything than what it was - her simple tiredness to spare him time, much less friendship, but when he approached her timidly, she understood that and felt guilt.

She hasn’t understood that her state was not only affecting her, but the people near her, and after Mirai’s birthday, she promises that she will do anything to keep herself away from darkness of the past year.

 

* * *

 

So she tries, she tries, without excessive guilt to take care of herself more. She tries to remind herself that this isn’t the time she is stealing from Mirai, but actually the time that is going to benefit Mirai in the long run. It is hard, very hard. It is also possible, the way it was not possible that entire past year.

Still hard. Mirai, at one, is still handful, and, as Kurenai feels more clear-headed, she also sees the terrors of the war around her. She tries to ask for help, but she’s picked the wrong time to do so - people can’t help her during war, not when they need to ensure their survival above else. She wonders if her mother has felt the same when she was born and they had to wander the world.

Somehow, when the final battle against Madara Uchiha unfolds, and Kurenai is captured, like the rest of the village under the genjutsu, she sees the world of her dreams - Asuma is there, and she is capable and strong and they two live and care for Mirai, and his love, as it did before, shields her from the rest of the world, she can’t quite shake the illusion long after the war is over.

She longs for that simple, careless, easy world, where she could never be lacking in anything, where she could live in the illusion of having everything under control.

And then, because she knows all about the nature of genjutsu, because she knows what it means to have a weakened mind that longs to live in the world of illusions, because she knows, better than anyone, the exact danger of such state, she vows to pull herself out of it.

When Shikamaru asks or suggests her to start dating, she want to laugh at him equal with crying. She knows that she is too close to death for anything beyond what she endures at the moment.

She worked so hard for this, and she works harder, but when the days turn brighter and steadily easier, it barely feels like it is her achievement, but a dumb luck, a string of happy coincidences. Maybe it is because the work of the mind is something unknown, or maybe because the nature of postpartum depressions is to past, or because Mirai is more grown with every day that passes, and more independent, or because the war is done, and the world, at long last seems stable enough to stay, but it becomes easy to get better. It becomes too grand of success, Kurenai understands in the hindsight.

She notes the rise of her appetite, she sleeps a lot less, but more restfully and wakes less and less exhausted from it. She still feels the need to nap in the middle of the day, and she gives in to that desire, because her desires grow too huge to be ignored.

Her love for Mirai awakens by the constant force of her will, she beats herself into providing care and humour and everything her daughter might need. She has been so good with Asuma, she doesn’t know what to think of that unexpected twist of her and Mirai being too different to truly connect, and all because her daughter is just too much her father.

But the string between a mother and a daughter is a force greater than all their differences, especially when Mirai is still a child, so Mirai needs and loves her, and Kurenai loves her daughter back with growing desperation and educates herself into providing the care that Mirai needs and wants.

She dedicates all her capability for sociality into Mirai. Ever since the war was their background, it created the illusion of them being the only two, that was there from the hospital, and it continues even in her mother’s house, it continues in peace. She barely sees anything but Mirai, barely thinks about anyone but Mirai, barely feels anything for anyone but Mirai. It does seem like a prison for the soul, she admits that, but after that dreadful first year, she learns to find that best trap in the world. Sweetest torture in the world - to be tortured in such exquisite way. She wonders if her mother ever came out of that trap, suddenly sure that her mother felt that, too - the sensation of the world thinning until there are only two people in it.

And through all of it, Mirai grows. She grows and she grows. Some days are so stretched they are eternal, each moment hard to pass, but somehow they do pass, and slowly the child is only more and more independent. The first hours of freedom turn into days of freedom. Kurenai knows that when they will move, and she understands only now that of course they will change, into weeks of freedom, she might even sigh with the regret at the time wasted and unappreciated of the moments that happen now.

The summer before Mirai turns two, Kurenai feels the season blooming - she hasn’t had the strength to even notice the weather change, maybe they weren’t even changing in true, as the war was unfolding, but suddenly summer in all it’s greatness is here. And, somehow, everything is alight yet again with possibilities, the world becomes a beautiful place to inhabit, and life turns into greatest privilege she’ll ever get to experience.

Mirai tries many of the fruits for the very first time in her life, and Kurenai thinks that this surely is one of the greatest treasures of being a mother - to gift the world to somebody, and to see the wonder of experiencing life in somebody so pure, so greatly loved. She slices the watermelon to give to Mirai, remembering how she loved it when she was a child, but Mirai says the smell is weird and refuses to eat it. Kurenai decides to accept her daughter’s choice and doesn’t persist, even though she is sure that if Mirai is to even lick the drop of the juice, she’d be sold.

And then, a few days later when she is picking Mirai from Shikamaru’s, she finds the two of them outside happily nipping on the juicy fruit (or is it berry?).

“Look at this traitor!” - Kurenai says, laughing, to Shikamaru.

She and Mirai spend the days outside - fruits, sun, overwhelming heat, fans whirring behind the ice, first licks of ice-cream for Mirai and even few drops of the alcohol for Kurenai who at long last is not feeding anymore, and the water - the fountains, the iced drinks, the trips to the lake, the rains and the puddles that evaporate before their eyes.

With everything awakening so roughly, so intensely, so, it seems, even stronger than before, the sex drive inside her awakens almost slowly, against Kurenai’s desire of it, she fights it down, not wanting it - Asuma is dead, that part of her life should, too, be dead. It persists, remaining stubbornly alive, stubbornly blooming much like nature, her daughter or peace.

Her birthday comes, and with a surprise Kurenai learns that she’s only turning thirty. She’s felt at least a decade older, and Mirai's first year much closer to the grave, so this feeling is almost a blessing in comparison.

Shikamaru shows up for the dinner casually with Ino, and she now knows that the rumour that Raido passed to her is true - they two are going out together now. Weirdly, they look good. Maybe it is because they are so deadpan comfortable around each other.

Kurenai, very personally, thinks that they both managed to do well by seeing past their own history and recognizing what a catch was there, right before their noses. Kurenai looks at Ino, long blonde hair and luminescent skin and has the same inkling she’s before Mirai was born - that Ino is a true vixen, who ends up taking the best the world has to offer. She’s the first to get the jounin rank of her peers, she’s the most beautiful one, she’s hooked the smart caring guy, and she is also a Yamanaka heir, doted by both of her parents. Kurenai only delights in white envy, thinking that some people are destined to have it all.

Asuma would’ve been proud of that. Kurenai wonders what would Asuma think of them two together, but comes with nothing. When Asuma was alive, Shikamaru and Temari looked solid and good, and Ino was developing a crush on Sai, fresh out of her childish infatuation with Sasuke.

How does Shikamaru exactly fall in line for Ino, Kurenai sort of comes short. Both Sai and Sasuke are the pretty boys, assuming that Ino wasn’t falling for them for their dark or mysterious pasts, and Shikamaru is neither of those things.

The night falls and as they stand, saying last goodbyes before the restaurant, Ino shivers and Shikamaru gives her his jacket. Maybe it is the night that pays tricks, or the first drops of the alcohol in such a long while, but the tight shirt outlines Shikamaru’s body, and Kurenai understands that maybe Ino’s taste hasn’t changed too dramatically.

Later, she will feel a sort of a guilt that wouldn’t be unlike the one she’s had the day she kicked Shikamaru from her house, like she thought of something inappropriate. Only this time it comes easier to shake off, for whatever reasons. Kurenai doesn’t let herself dwell on them.

She only tells herself what the very drunk, happy to be freed from responsibilities, Tsunade wished her - she needs to get laid.

 

* * *

 

But how to get laid, that’s the question.

For all her experience, for all her age, and the fact that she even has a child, Kurenai feels completely at lost. Asuma was the first and the only one. She fell for him even before she knew what sexual attraction is.

The three years between them in many ways influenced their relationships. Kurenai was nine when she was placed in the same team with Asuma. Hokage’s son had a sort of wild confidence around him that drawn Kurenai immediately in. They were friends, the friendship between the first members of the same team is sacred, overwhelming. Still, Kurenai knew that what she felt for Asuma was different from her feelings for Raido, though she barely knew anything above that.

They first kissed when she was twelve, it was unexpected for both of them, the mission left them two alone, and then it just happened. Kurenai wished for it to happen again, was delighted when it did.

Her mother, at the time, was still mad that she is going on missions with two boys, and was madder when the adult overlooking them, died. Instinctively, Kurenai knew what her mother dreaded for her, and that in turn filled her with same dread. Apart from maybe three kisses in two years, there was nothing between her and Asuma that was above friendship.

At seventeen, Asuma, with his never-failing confidence, was more and more popular, and Kurenai felt jealous. She also begun her quiet rebellion from her mother, the one that was based more on understanding that her mother wasn’t always right, rather than being based on actions her mother would consider unforgivable. When she and Asuma started dating at that time, she did it quietly, telling him not to tell anyone. Only Raido knew.

But, for all their new status, few things changed. Kurenai now knows that the relationships they had suited her, who was fourteen, but maybe not Asuma who was seventeen. There was nothing happening her mother wouldn’t approve of. Kurenai still doesn’t quite understand how Asuma made the talk of sex that they had a year into these new relationships seem natural. At fifteen, for her, sex was something exciting, and frightening, and something she hasn’t felt ready for, and thought she’d never be. Eighteen-year old Asuma agreed to wait for longer, when Kurenai said she’d rather break up, or let him do it with someone else.

But after that time, Asuma’s sexual attraction to her became a thing she could never un-notice, even though, at first, she wished she could. But then, Asuma was still Asuma - good-natured, unashamed and his attraction for her was so natural, Kurenai learned to accept it, and slowly, even to enjoy it. It helped that she started understanding the appeal of sex, why people might withstand such awkwardness, why they might let themselves to be seen naked all for it. She was ready to give in, more out of sense of experiment than genuine desire at sixteen, but, somehow, things stalled, and so they did it on Asuma’s twentieth birthday.

Asuma, at the beginning, craved for sex constantly, but to Kurenai it was something exciting and pleasurable, closer to a game, something she did gladly with Asuma, but she was drawing greatest enjoyment from his desire for her, from the pleasure she gave him. She thought that was alright, she thought she isn’t the person who is losing herself in the desire, but was unsurprised when it started to change. Just, as everything else with her, the true drive, the true craving for sex, the true enjoyment of it was born much later - she was about twenty-two when she started dragging Asuma into the shadowed streets, unable to wait any longer, needing his touch, not even caring about who might see them.

And yet, now, she yearns for sex even more. Or, maybe, it just feels so - present is always more overwhelming than the past.

She can’t stop watching the muscled bodies on the training grounds, a reroute she and Mirai take these days as she prepares to go back to work. The smell of sweat, the fights, even the angry meaningless shouts - she is captivated by it. She has to masturbate at least daily, rubbing herself quickly and focusing on getting off, afraid that Mirai might awaken, but what she really wants to do it to savour the time, focus on the pleasure.

She also feels guilty, and not just because she feels like she is cheating on Asuma. She feels guilty and dirty for fantasizing about those faceless unknown men. Before, all her sexual attraction was only ever directed at one person.

What makes her feel far guiltier is the fact that she, unfortunately, is focused on one person and has to distract herself with all the other people to make herself stop that.

After the war, after everything, at long last she and Shikamaru are able to fall into their routine, they see each other every other day - she and Mirai go to Nara’s, or he comes to them, or all three of them decide on an outing, which usually only means the playing ground.

For her, who, because of her gift for genjutsu, never accepted verbal communication as enough, the touches come naturally. Had it been anyone else, at this point of friendship, she would feel no awkwardness as not to touch, casually. When she and Shikamaru talk about Mirai, and Mirai touches and touches and touches her, even through that sensory overload, she thinks that it should be natural for her to just place her hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder, while they talk. And then, she is also aware that she can’t do that.

That becomes a theme for all her talks with Shikamaru. She reasons with herself that, of course, her desire is within the reach - she walks hand in hand with Raido, but, still, she can’t.

She can’t because, and it grows steadily worse, because the desire doesn’t feel platonic.

At the same time, in the core, it also is.

She will sit on the grass beneath the sun in the Nara’s forrests, with Mirai gurgling happily at the ants, with him by her and she will feel such a desire to simply place her head onto his shoulder, without disrupting the conversation.

They will be in her room, with Mirai on her lap. Mirai will tell them the never-ending story, and while they’ll laugh above her head, Kurenai feels the need of the moment demanding her to nudge him. But she doesn’t.

She never lets herself.

When Mirai turns two, Shikamaru comes to the birthday all soft and tired. She understands from him shielding himself from the bright light that he is hungover, and feels such a great need to help him in this condition. How she’d like it - to find him a dark room, to make him lay down, to bring him something to drink, to hold him while he is vulnerable.

And that desire is so motherish, that she almost calms because of it. As the evening unfolds though, through being constantly aware of Shikamaru’s place - it is never far from her, it heats as much as the warm autumn day does, she feels herself hum with anticipation. She doesn’t need to touch herself between her legs to feel how much she wants to.

When she places her hand onto his shoulder, the touch is all electric.

Oh Fuck, she thinks - I want him. I want to have sex with Shikamaru, she admits once.

And promises to never do that again.

She shames herself, the reasons are all there, she doesn’t need to think too hardly about why and how that is a bad idea.

Kurenai remembers how mad she was to discover his crush upon her, and this is the exact thing she dreaded of when she learned of it - that in her state, it would be so easy for her to surrender to another’s desire of her. He was already so close to her, he was everywhere, and he was helpful, and to learn then that he broke up with Temari for her was dangerous precisely because she knew how easy it would be. But then, she’d only turn to be a mirror of his desire, and will lose the last thread of herself in another person.

She tries not to think how it was equally easy to surrender to Asuma. Asuma fell for her first, had she been merely reciprocating his love? She reasons that of course that can’t be true. She hasn’t been quite as broken as she is now, after Asuma’s death. Besides, this love lasted through so many years, it couldn’t have been only Kurenai’s surrender.

But if she were to allow herself to think that way about Shikamaru (even if she were to forget about other reasons for them not to be together - their ages, the fact of Asuma’s constant presence between them), she can’t know for sure if she has only imprinted on him because he was there when she needed someone, but could never ask for it, because he fell for her at her lowest. She knows the exact dangers of such needing love, when there is nothing else but this love, how it exhausts the love itself, because her mother has strangled her with her love, and she feels trapped, she wants to be free from it. No, if she cares even a little about Shikamaru, she will not love him with this pathetic love, she will not impose it on him, using his grief for Asuma that makes him feel responsible for her. Not that she feels herself capable, thankfully, to do that. She could do it to a nineteen year old boy, grieving for his teacher, but she’ll barely capture his attention now, compared to all those unbent, unbroken beautiful girls all around him.

No, if she ever to love, she wants to do so freely.

She restraints herself, separates herself from desire, from all desires. She wants to only be Mirai’s mother, why would she need to be anything else?

The depression that seemed to be gone, comes back all at once. And through it, her will spreads out, while trying to fight her own nature down.

She even thinks of priests, and of their beatings or of iced water, of atonement prior to the sin.

How silly human body is made, Kurenai thinks. Everything has to be connected. She feels mad she can’t hand-pick the exact emotions she’d like to feel and completely rid of anything that she shouldn’t.

All the while, Shikamaru goes through life, completely unaware of the turmoil he causes her with the mere fact of his being. And he fucking dates. He dates all the women in the world, or so Kurenai feels. They are all beautiful, and smart, and amazing, and they all fit him.

The darkness unfolds, as if colder months invite it in. Kurenai feels so stupid for believing she is free from that. Of course, now her life will forever be the time that she awaits for the depression to sweep in, or the depression itself.

And in that feeling, or, more accurately, that lack of feelings, of any feeling at all, through that she becomes simply desperate to plainly feel anything, anything at all. She thinks that she’s called that nothingness upon herself by being ashamed of something healthy - of experiencing life through the medium that is given to her - through her emotions, through her desires. In that vastness where she can’t find anything inside her, she understands just how important it is - to desire for anything.

The wave eases and then passes when the snow falls. Winter is such a miracle, a sensation upon sensation - coldness, hot chocolates, almost constant hunger. It is like winter reminds her body that it is meant to survive, and, once again, she is pulled out by riding the wave of being attuned to bodily smallest wishes - she sleeps when she wants to, eats, a lot. It is not something she does, she feels yet again, it is more something that happens to her, but, also, Kurenai suspects, there might indeed be a key somewhere - she might learn more about that state, about passing that state, and about overcoming it. Slowly, she dedicates herself to it. And, deciding to treat it, like an illness it is, she decides that the best course of action will be trying to prevent the next wave from hitting her too hard, or at all.

She listens and cares for herself, with what is rest of her time after listening and caring for Mirai. When her mother suggests kindergarten, she promises to think. And she does. She finds a place, but it is quite far.

She’s saved enough, and thanks to Asuma’s sister help in form of aliments, she thinks she and Mirai will be able to rent an apartment, just for themselves. And in no time, she’ll go back to work.

After Mirai became easier to handle after she’s learned how to talk and to walk, she now becomes a handful, again. Motherhood, it seems, is consisting of waves, too.

Mirai wants to talk and talk and talk, and she also rebels against Kurenai, by disobeying every rule, by running away, by screaming. Kurenai allows that rebellion, petrified that if she pushes too much, she will force her child to yearn for the freedom from her mother, same as Kurenai dreams to this day.

Life, as it tends to be, after a moment of darkness, becomes as good as if that past moment was never there. And, obviously, when it is good, it is also hard.

Shikamaru helps them move, and she sees him almost daily.

He is fucking sated, content, settled in his bones. He all but reeks of sex he seems to be having constantly. Kurenai even tells herself to think of all the sicknesses he might be getting in order to stall her desire, but she knows he’s too smart to be careless. He just comes and lifts her boxes from the apartment to the car, and then drives the car - one hand on the wheel, looking sideways at Kurenai while they talk, and then he lifts the boxes from the car into her new apartment.

She is so happy with everything in her life, as if at long last she is plunging out of cold dark water, and things just fall for her - new apartment (away from her mother), Mirai about to go to kindergarten, her job soon after. Of course, at least one thing has to go awry. She has to lust after her late-husband’s student.

It’d be easier if only Shikamaru hadn’t been there for her constantly, if she hadn’t known him as well as she did - that he is smart, exceptionally caring and sensitive, and at the same time, that he has the type of dark sense of humour that makes Kurenai laugh but also feel scandalized. Oh, and he is also greatest with Mirai. Who knew this was such turn on? Surprises of motherhood they never warn you about.

She almost thinks at him, after blocking her mind, - I want you.

He moves along her apartment, and while he does it, her mind shows her that they could have sex here, or there, or over there. Maybe even there.

Her desire that she doesn’t know what to do with - to shame it into non-being, and she is afraid she will once again cause the desire for life itself to vanish, so she endures it.

Kiba tells her about the constant stream of girls that passes through Shikamaru, telling her that he just doesn’t understand.

“Sasuke, maybe,” - he says, drawing out, meaning that, of course, they should all in fact go after him. Kurenai has to hide her smile.

And Kurenai never says anything out loud, not intending to speak in that way with her student, but she thinks that she understands. She really, truly understands. Shikamaru has the air of confidence to him, the reputation, even his family’s reputation, his control over himself inspires, the way he never loses his temper suggests level-headedness that is so necessary for women who are warned all their lives of men capable of cruelty.

That damned day she can’t stop - it is so good to have him near, to touch him. She presses further, and then, she just snaps out, her desire was so tightly bundled together, it comes away all at once, once she has him near.

When they have sex, Kurenai has one little moment to think that this is the exact reason no one refuses him - they all feel it, just how much pleasure he is capable to giving.

She orgasms, and orgasms, and orgasms, so many times she doesn’t remember, they all start blurring into one another - each informing the other’s pleasure.

And Shikamaru is there, constantly, all around her, never letting her go or breathe, he is just everywhere, no matter where she turns. He kisses her face with such desperation, Kurenai wants so badly to open her mind and force him to open his, but she doesn’t.

It is just a one-night stand, she reminds herself the next morning, already feeling terrible. Acid in her stomach almost makes her vomit, she feels such guilt, such shame, such confusion. And then, so unfairly, she thinks of Asuma. Is it too soon for her to replace him in her mind, if not in his true place all around her? The guilt informs her that it is. And with Asuma’s student, no less.

She only starts to breathe easier about a month later when she spots Shikamaru with yet another girl on his hand. She is jealous, maybe. But also relieved that at least for him it was just another night with just another woman, and so she hasn’t done anything too heavy for her to lift.

That relief is stinking of pain that she feels by seeing him move on.

She decides not to think of it, and somehow, she doesn’t. She wants him. She slept with him. That should be enough, only of course, it isn’t. But so what?

 

* * *

 

In no time, she is back in the field, and the greatest blessing of her job is how demanding it is.

All her students have received the jounin ranks, same as the majority of people who have fought in the war.

And she feels so great to be back in the field, especially with her students, who are now the same rank as she is. Their dynamic changes, Kurenai discovers that there are now times when she needs to go back to the shadows and give the leadership to someone else, but even so, after their many years together, there is something in their team that remains unchanged.

They are the searching team, so their missions never were too dangerous, but still, even for a peaceful time, Kurenai suspects they are given some serious slack, considering the mere power of her team. When she talks to Kakashi about it, he says that he only wanted to give her some time to adjust after her leave.

Kurenai asks him not to. She doesn’t want to. What their team deserves is to be recognized. After the shuffle of the war, when so many teams end up being broken or eliminated altogether, her team becomes one of the oldest to be together for so many years.

She suspects he also tries to spare her daughter, but it is peaceful now. She is in no danger.

Missions turn harder after that, but also easier - they are so much more familiar to her, she and her team know how to meet their demands.

Mirai loves her kindergarten, and with the help of her mother, Sarutobi and Nara families, Kurenai almost doesn’t even feel guilty about being absent from her daughter’s life. She steals the time when she can, but she also sees that her daughter enjoys her time, and so Kurenai doesn’t want to trap her inside her love.

Her job and her daughter take up all her time. She still watches the never wavering stream of Shikamaru’s girls, and she does feel jealous, but with her day spread in such way, she doesn’t even understand how can she have anything beyond what she has now. There is no place in her life for Shikamaru, much less for any other romantic endeavour. Not that she thinks herself capable to provide any kind of competition to the polished women around him. And she knows herself well enough to know that she isn’t capable of being in casual relationship.

She still sees him, and quite often - now just as much as with Mirai, as doing her job, but with that hectic rhythm of her trying to jiggle all the balls she has, they barely have the time to speak of anything important - they just keep the other up to date with the latest news in another’s life and then they drift away. In those stolen times, she thinks it might not be so bad, after all, to lose herself in something casual. But then she imagines trying to talk to Shikamaru about it, then have casual sex, and then watch him have someone else for another night. She isn’t sure of her choices, but she thinks this script is easier for her to handle, even if too familiar.

When the mission goes awry, when she has to step forward in order to give her students the time to save themselves, the second to last thought she has is that she hasn’t talked to Shikamaru properly in years, and he will now have to step up to be Mirai’s parent. The last thought before she is captured is of Mirai.

 

* * *

 

She has been trained for this scenario, she’s imagined that scenario countless times, her life was always open to the possibility of everything going wrong, of that particular terror of her job, but she’s never been in one. It is something that is easy to forget, considering how high the stakes are constantly, how unwavering the risk is, how much her mind has always been showing her - this is what might have happened to you, this is where you could’ve been. But she’s never, not once been captured. Until now.

 

* * *

 

She awakens in Konoha’s hospital, but her mind keeps dropping into the nothingness - what a blessing.

 

* * *

 

Slowly, she remembers about Mirai, and tries to ask all those shadows of men around her, and they reply something comforting, she thinks, not recognizing words, but following the tone, and drops further inside.

 

* * *

 

She feels better in about a month, Mirai has been visiting her frequently in that time with Kurenai’s mother.

In two months she remembers everything of her life, and remembers the trainings she underwent - she has been prepared for this exact scenario, and she knows what to do.

After that, she feels alright. Back to the norm. Everything is alright.

Before she is released from the hospital, Shikamaru comes.

She doesn’t mind him - he’s visited her almost daily, but he never speaks, so she learned not to talk with him, too.

Only this time he paces the length of her room, relentless energy, much unlike his usual slump on the chair by her bed.

She watches him and sees that her suspicions were true - he is mad at her, she’s been too tired and too scared to deal with his, maybe even righteous anger.

“How could you?” - he says, first, seething.

‘Please don’t make it about me abandoning Mirai,’ she thinks at him in desperation, transferring her pain, transferring her hopelessness of the situation - there was nothing else to be done.

“OF COURSE IT IS ABOUT MIRAI!”- he stops in his pacing, and then, before she has the time to say something, he says. - “There was plenty you could’ve done,” spitting words at her.

She feels herself trembling in the sight of such fury. She’s never known Shikamaru to be cruel, never expected him to be so merciless to her.

“What? What could I do?..” - she asks, genuinely perplexed, ashamed at feeling fear. She isn’t afraid of anything he might do or even say to her, but that she might end up in tears in front of him.

“You could’ve left anyone else of your team instead. They don’t have children,” - he says, meaning each word.

She watches him, petrified, back.

This suggestion, this terrible suggestion that he means, she sees in his face that she seeks for a sign of remorse and finds nothing, is impossible.

She tries to say as much, but he only gets madder. And she feels herself hardening against him, against his stupid moronic idea. To leave whom? she almost wants to ask - Kiba or Shino, they both know Hinata is too valuable to be left behind, or should she have done just that, since they are here to entertain the absolute mad things Kurenai might’ve done.

“Get out,” - she tells him. Madness at him strengthens her, and she thinks that if he is to disobey, she will either kick him out of the room or leave it herself, she simply can’t stand to see the sight of him.

He stops, probably feeling her anger, but he doesn’t move. They are both frozen and angry.

“You will obey me,” - she tells him. - “I outrank you. This is an order, soldier.”

He stands for the long long moment, and Kurenai thinks that if he is to disobey her now, she doesn’t even know what exactly will happen. There might be no turning back for them if they are to fight.

He turns on the heels, and leaves.

All tension leaves Kurenai in another breath and she sits down on her bed.

 

* * *

 

Kakashi knocks on her door just as she kisses Mirai goodnight. She wonders just where the line of a good ninja and a criminal lies.

She invites him for tea, they both pretending this is common for them. Kakashi is still in his Hokage’s dressings and of course the leader of the village doesn't have anything else to do but visit a friend.

He asks her about Mirai, and so Kurenai tells him the news. She wanted Mirai to decide for herself if she wants to go to the academy, and so Mirai has decided. Kurenai only begins to understand that she’s imagined a different future for her daughter, never believing she’d follow her footsteps.

Though maybe she is following Shikamaru’s footsteps, for all the drift between her and him, he spends much time together with Mirai, enough to be another parental figure in Mirai’s life. And maybe that desire also has something to do with Asuma, the person they all talk so much about with Mirai, his presence just as constant in their daughter’s life.

Mirai comes next, rubbing her eyes, telling them that she wants to drink, like Kurenai hadn’t placed a glass of water by her bed, the way she always does.

“I drank it, Mommy,” - she says. She also informs them that she wants to eat, right after she takes two delicate sips from the cup, and so they both know she is here because she is terribly curious.

While Mirai asks the question for the Hokage and tells Kakashi every single thing she’s ever done or thought of, Kurenai has the time to think just why Kakashi came.

All her conclusion prove wrong when at long last Mirai falls asleep, by the grace of Kakashi being a master story-teller, is there anything he can’t do?, and Kakashi says what he came here for.

“Shikamaru is planning a coup, have you heard?” - he asks with a tilt of a head.

He knows she doesn’t, she sends him the thought and impatience.

She hopes it isn’t related to the fight they’ve had.

“It is,” - he replies casually like he hasn’t just slipped inside her brain. She blocks her mind more carefully.

“He’s already been mad that I give you the hard missions,” - Kakashi says. And Kurenai’s eyes widen in surprise, she’s never known Shikamaru did something like that.

“Yeah,” - Kakashi nods at her impression, - “It wasn’t my choice to make you stand back. He has quite successfully manipulated the Hokage.”

“Not so successfully,” - Kurenai understands where it is going. How mad Shikamaru was at the person who’s given their team the mission that ended in her being taken.

“That’s the reason he is planning the coup. He wants to change the Hokage to someone he can control,” - Kakashi shrugs.

“Oh,” - Kurenai understands. Naruto has been begging Shikamaru to outline some kind of plan on how for him to become a Hokage for years. Shikamaru always refused, preferring to be lazy, - “He plans to make Naruto the Seventh?”

“Quite so,” - Kakashi nods. She sees in his humour that he seems to be happy to be soon relieved from the responsibilities placed on him. And she almost feels his pride at the thought of his student becoming a Hokage.

Kurenai thinks about Shikamaru. If he is outlining a plan, it will work. She wonders about the last moment of their fight in the hospital when she gave him an order to leave. Was he mad that she pointed out she outrank him? This way he will be the second person in the village.

“Well, you need to rest, I’ll leave you two,” - he nods at the sleeping Mirai in her hands and stands up to leave.

“You should rest, too,” - she says to Kakashi. What a job it is - being a Hokage. Even Kakashi is breathing exhaustion from it.

“Thanks to Shikamaru, I might be able to do just that soon,” - with that he disappears. Good ninja skills seem to be incompatible with good manners, thinks Kurenai with a healthy dose of humour.

She and Kakashi have weird relationship, shadowed by his father. She worries about him, wondering what Sakumo would say to his son, and Kakashi cares about all members of her early team in the same vein - he has replaced his father, and so, it seems, thought himself to inherit the responsibility for them three from his father.

 

* * *

 

She knows she ought to speak to Shikamaru, but the aftermath of their last encounter is still there. She knows that she isn’t mad or sad at or because of Shikamaru, but she thinks that she needs to give Shikamaru a bit more time to calm down.

The day gets pushed back and back, until suddenly she has no choice because drunk Shikamaru stumbles into her apartment one day.

She feels a breath of annoyance - he was picking Mirai from the kindergarten today, and so they two come back, both giggly. It seems like Shikamaru has done anything Mirai wanted on their way back - he bought her balloons and toys and way too much ice-cream. Mirai is all euphoric, high on sugar, and so Kurenai resigns that with this mood of her daughter it will be near impossible to tame her.

But then, Kurenai can’t even hold onto that annoyance because Mirai is happy and giggly and joyous - her words are skipping, eyes shining. And, well, Shikamaru also looks guilty already. So she allows Mirai to tell and show her what they did.

Kurenai knows what that mood is bound to end with, so she decides all of them have to take a walk - for Mirai to spend out all that energy. Shikamaru instantly obeys her, and goes back to the door, but Kurenai places a hand onto his shoulder, and tells him to go lay down. He can barely walk in a straight line.

He hiccups, and then holds her hand tighter on his shoulder. He is piss drunk, and she is still happy at that contact.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Kurenai,” - he tries to say, words intwined with liquor. But she sees how much he means them - he looks her in the eyes with desperation.

“Shikamaru, I’m not mad,” - she rolls her eyes. What does he supposes her to be? His mother? He is an adult, he decided to get drunk in the middle of the day, Mirai has not been hurt, in fact, she’s had the time of her life, there is nothing for Kurenai to be mad at.

“I’m sorry,” - he mumbles further, and so she sends him with a strong pull of her hand to the couch.

“Stay the night here,” - Kurenai tells him, and then flushes from the implication. Thankfully, Shikamaru is drunk enough not to notice.

She decides she and Mirai are going on a training grounds. Mirai has been begging Kurenai to teach her. Kurenai thought Mirai is too young, but then Shikamaru mentioned that his father started training him long before the academy. No wonder all those students from the clans are being so strong.

She hasn’t wanted to teach Mirai, but right now it seems like the best idea as to how direct the overflowing energy of Mirai.

 

* * *

 

She is clanking the dishes a bit loudly, Kurenai admits it. She just walked Mirai to kindergarten and decided to make the tea. Shikamaru has been unmoving on the couch since yesterday evening when she and very exhausted Mirai came back home.

And when Shikamaru groans, waking up, she feels a tiny prickling of guilt. But then, knowing that he woke up, she gives him a bit of a time to gain himself (he hasn’t undressed, so not that much time), and moves into the living room.

“I can help,” - she offers. She isn’t a medic, but there is little she can’t do inside a mind of a human.

“Please,” - he only replies. He is slumping on the couch, protecting his eyes from the sun.

She sits down near him, and places her hands around his head. She feels his chakra with hers and redirects it to be more focused - a little trick that activates healing properties of chakra to speed up.

“It will be better in five,” - she tells him, standing up.

“It’s already…” - he says, but she notices that he doesn’t move his hands away from his eyes. - “Sorry, I must be stinking.”

‘Only the alcohol,’ - she sends to his mind.

“You want to take a shower?” - Kurenai thinks about the poor quality of water in her building, but it must be better than nothing. And then, with a heartbeat missed, she realizes that he’s taken a shower here. Thank God, Shikamaru is still not watching her. She moves back to the kitchen, and hears him move towards the bathroom.

She hears the waters running, and while she finishes her tea, she tries to remember where Asuma’s clothing is. Has she moved it with her from her mother’s?

She leaves the things by the door and sends Shikamaru the thought about them.

When he comes out, she sees that he indeed is feeling better.

Asuma’s clothing fits him just about. Kurenai has known they are the same height. Shikamaru is only a bit leaner.

“Want anything?” - Kurenai looks around her scarce products. There isn’t much.

“Only the coffee,” - and then he moves his hand for her not to stand. - “I’ll make it.”

He moves and tinkers around her kitchen. Momentarily, Kurenai is feeling strange about him being quite so comfortable around her place, but she throws everything out of her head.

“How’s Naruto?” - she asks to distract herself.

“He’s alright,” - he answers carefully. The rumours of them two being a team are already circling. - “I think Sakura already hates me for being so much in their house.”

Oh, so he confirms it all.

“She’ll hate you even more when Naruto will secure the office. Sakura will never see him again,” - she smiles. Truth to be told, she hasn’t known exactly if Naruto and Sakura are together, so she is a bit surprised, but then decides that she isn’t. People like Naruto with such strength of the spirit will always get everything they want. And now he will also become the Hokage. - “How long have they been together?” she asks, unable to tame her curiosity.

“They got together around the time Chouji and Ino got together,” - Shikamaru answers.

Oh. About two years, or so Kurenai tries to calculate. She’s been amused by Ino dating Chouji right after Shikamaru, she’s thought that this might be wise - to get her teammates out of her system, to try this thing that everyone expected out of them, but she’s been pleasantly surprised by the fact that Ino and Chouji are still looking stable.

And now she knows that Naruto and Sakura are living together. Well, Kurenai reminds herself, they are twenty-five, at least. Shino has already turned twenty-six, though he is the oldest of his peers.

Just because none of her students seem to be interested in dating, doesn’t mean there is anything too early for their friends.

“I heard that you are taking a six-months leave,” - Shikamaru tries tensely, as he sits down by her side. Kurenai wants to link her hand through his elbow which is almost touching her.

“Hmm,” - she says, not sure what the right thing to say would be. She still remembers the anger Shikamaru felt. She hasn’t understood the reason for such explosion, so she threads carefully. She isn’t afraid of him, she only doesn’t want to infuriate him, or to make him feel worried about her.

“Take a year. I’ll make Naruto sign it first thing,” - he says, and it feels like they have somehow with their carefulness acknowledged their past fight, both made sure that the other isn’t holding any grudges, and so she breathes easier, too.

“Oh? Haven’t you heard? I’m resigning.”

His head snaps to look at her, and so she can’t hold onto her face, and she drops the mask and laughs at his expression.

Her entire body gravitates forward, so as to lean on him, but then she thinks how pleasant that’d be - to feel his body against hers, and stays in place. She wouldn’t feel awkward about touching anyone else precisely for that reason - she knows the touch with Shikamaru will be something more, will make her crave something more, and if she gives once, she might not be able not to give in further and further.

“Fuck, can you imagine? All the work pointless just like that,” - he smiles, relieved. And then, before Kurenai has the time to ask her question, sobers up, and says, “But if you decide to resign, feel free to do it.”

“No,” - she smiles, surprised by the suggestion. -“No, there isn’t anything else I can do.”

Her work was so demanding, she barely had the time to develop any other aspect of her life. Besides, she’s done it since she can remember herself. She has no desire to reestablish herself, to create her life anew. She is one of the people who simply like to take roots in the soil, to take her out of her familiar ground would mean to near destroy her.

“But Shikamaru, if you don’t want to,” - she tries and fails how to make him understand. He seemed to decide that the responsibility for Mirai means that he needs to build an entire world for her.

“Huh, no, don’t worry,” - and then he watches her and she thinks that now he’ll tell her that he found a way to dodge all the responsibilities on someone else while he’ll have the time to watch the skies. - “I want that job. I really do.”

She hasn’t expected that. But she accepts the truth in those words, deciding to believe him.

He continues, and for a moment she is lost as to the meaning, “You don’t have to do anything, if you want.”

“Oh,” - that money thing he constantly hits at. - “I’ll be bored out of my mind,” and she thinks she will be. She doesn’t know who she is apart of her job.

“You’re quite good at this mother thing,” - he says with a thin smile, probably knowing what a blatant lie his words are.

“I hope I’m a bit better at my job, though, or else I don’t know why Konoha still tolerates me.”

He frowns. “You’re a great mother.”

And she smiles, and while thinking, ’No, I’m not,’ doesn’t open that thought to him, but says instead, “Thank you."

Before he leaves, she remembers to ask him, “I heard you are moving.”

“Oh, yes,” - he shifts from one leg to another. - “It’s right by academy, it might be best for Mirai to come there instead of running through entire village.”

“Have I told you about the academy?” - she tries to remember, but knows it is impossible - she’s only asked Mirai very recently, and she hasn’t had the time to talk to Shikamaru about it.

“Um, no, it was Kakashi,” - he looks at her, as if he asked a question with the expression demanding an answer.

“I see,” - she offers for lack of anything better.

Shikamaru stands a little longer and then turns to leave.

 

* * *

 

(Sasuke is dining at Naruto and Sakura’s when Shikamaru marches in. Sasuke rolls his eyes when he feels his teammate immediately tense. They are so worried and nervous about the entire plan Shikamaru has, and also so giddy, it is just plain annoying. All three of them are constantly talking, scheming. He just thought that at least this day would be free from Shikamaru, Sakura has promised him that the dinners were for Team 7 only.

Sasuke stands up to leave, the last thing he wants is to hear another word of campaign, but Shikamaru says, “Sasuke, stay.”

He’d do anything for Naruto and Sakura, he really would. Sometimes he looks at the bliss of their home and thinks that he will murder absolutely anyone who will make them doubt the naive dream they are building together. Sasuke will take upon himself all the darkness of the world only for the sake of those two remaining this obvious to the general state of the world.

But even they annoy him on a good day. And they are the two of three living people that don’t make him want to crawl out of skin on a constant basis.

So, yes, he wishes he could chidori through Shikamaru right now. But Naruto has dreamed of being Hokage for so long, Sasuke decides that he can be bothered to help them, if his help is needed.

He remains standing, but he doesn’t move, showing Shikamaru that he is ready to hear his plan.

“Kakashi,” - Shikamaru starts. The main reason the preparation for the battle is taking so long, is exactly that - Kakashi. Naruto has the power of a God, and he has, easily, at least ten times the amount of chakra of a normal person, but all his fights with Kakashi always end up with him being upped. Kakashi is too smart for Naruto to crack. Sasuke has seen one or two fights that the entire village was invited to, and Sasuke is sure that he would find a way to win against Kakashi, but there is no way he’d share his secrets with Naruto. But Sasuke knows that it would be hard. Kakashi deserves his reputation. Maybe against Sasuke, Kakashi would play differently and leave Sasuke without a win, too. The one person in Team 7 who can outsmart Kakashi in a battle is Sakura, but for all her wicked strength, Kakashi knows stronger, more powerful jutsu to win against her. All three of them can win against Kakashi, maybe not with ease, but for sure. The three of them together is the greatest team in all the history, Sasuke knows it. But to win a Hokage title, one needs to fight all alone. And, well, the one person who is the strongest in combined aspects - physical training, knowledge of jutsu, mental abilities, control and the power of chakra is Kakashi. Sasuke thinks that he is one of the strongest shinobi in all the history, and the only person who could’ve been better than Kakashi is Itachi at his best.

Sasuke looks forward to the battle in which Naruto will win against Kakashi. Maybe later, he will make Kakashi fight him, too, just to test Sasuke’s abilities, without taking the title he doesn’t want. Much like Shikamaru and Naruto formed a team to plan the battle, Sasuke and Sakura observed them from behind to make a team later on, the one that will win with more ease against Kakashi.

“What’s his type?” - Shikamaru says something unexpected. Previous weeks were all dedicated to Naruto learning the necessary jutsu, or learning the various strategies of their upcoming battle. Sasuke sees that Naruto takes Shikamaru’s question with all seriousness, thinking this is related to the Hokage title, he trusts Shikamaru so whole-heartedly. Sasuke exchanges glances with Sakura. Sometimes Shikamaru seems to forget that he isn’t the only smart person in the room.

“Romantic one?” - Sakura asks, disbelievingly.

“Yes. Did he date anyone? Fancied anyone?”

Sasuke sees that Sakura is on him, so he decides to follow her lead, and stands back.

He thinks about the question. They don’t know, that’s the truth. Their childhood was spent with that question being the most interesting mission they ever had - they spied after Kakashi, they all analyzed any interaction he would have with other women. At first, Sasuke was sure that Kakashi is just too good of a ninja to let anyone know anything of his personal life, but right now he suspects the truth must be much more depressing. When they spied after Kakashi, they discovered that the majority of the time he spent away from them was visiting the graves, sleeping in his hole of an apartment, reading pervert books while stumbling around the village and occasionally fighting Guy. For all his reputation, general aura of someone adult and cool, all his abilities and even his looks, for all the rightful status of him being a living legend, Kakashi is living quite a pathetic life. Though Sasuke isn’t the one to speak. His life is remarkably similar these days, only with his friends being alive.

“There was one girl,” - Naruto says. Sasuke remembers how they spied after them. She turned out to be a spy shinobi.

“I always thought that he and Guy had something,” - Sakura offers. Truth is, Sakura once said if Kakashi and Guy are competing in everything, they surely have competed in some sex stuff. Naruto had a field day with that one. But Guy is getting married to Mizukage in about a week.

“They’re all dead,” - Sasuke says. He is fairly sure if there is anyone Kakashi loved, it is one of his teammates.

“Okay, so is there anyone now that he talks to, frequently?” - Shikamaru asks impatiently.

“Only us three,” - Naruto shrugs. Sakura hums in agreement, Sasuke nods.

Shikamaru nods like he has suspected that. And then looks at Sasuke the way Sasuke doesn’t like.

“Do you have a type, Sasuke?” - he asks. Naruto and Sakura almost bend double because of laughter. He will kill all of them, Sasuke resigns. He might spend the rest of his life looking for Orochimaru to help him revive his two best friends, and then take the proper punishment for reviving the dead, but he will murder every fucking person in this room.

“Why do you think he’d like to date me?” - he rolls his eyes. This is clearly nothing related to Naruto becoming a Hokage, Sasuke doesn’t know why he is still here. Okay, he is fairly interested in Kakashi’s love life. It has been the greatest secret of his childhood, he can’t leave.

“Have you seen your face?” - Naruto and Sakura ask in unison, offended somehow.

Sasuke sighs out. There is no way he is going to be the center of the joke, there’s no way he will let these three talk him into something clearly impossible, but also humiliating, Kakashi will see through them, and, besides, there is no way this is connected to battle for Hokage’s title.

But before he has the time to disappear, Sakura instantly jumps in, “Just think, Sasuke - we’ll learn at last what’s behind his mask!”

Which makes him stutter. Even Naruto is wowing in the background.

Together they are the force to make Gods afraid, but they still hadn’t seen what’s beneath Kakashi’s mask. Another great mystery from the childhood.

Sasuke stays.

“I think Sasuke might be Kakashi’s type. He seems to like the red eyes,” - Sakura says next to Shikamaru. Sasuke meets her eyes and smirks while they share the joke that makes Shikamaru at last loose his busy aura around him. Hokage’s business, Sasuke thinks, yeah, right. Naruto still doesn’t get anything and just looks from one of them to another. Sasuke thinks that such a freaking tool should never hold Hokage’s office. He might have to become the Hokage to prevent the greatest idiot from becoming one. Who knows, maybe he and Sakura need to move forward with their plan.)

 

* * *

 

Suddenly Kurenai understands that her child is all grown. Mirai goes to the academy, and she is working and it almost feels like they both have their own separate routines to go through. Similarly, Kurenai understands, their lives, that were at one point so tightly intwined, will unknot and then they will drift away from each other. But, right now, it isn’t so.

She expects to regret the years when Mirai was much closer to her than she is now, when they were inseparable, but the truth is, she enjoys the time right now more. She likes being able to talk to Mirai, to hear her daughter tell her of her day, she likes telling Mirai something of her missions, she likes to play with her daughter, missing her terribly after their separation. This time motherhood seems at long last to be filled with all the joy she thought she was lied about. She thought she’d never, ever, ever get another child, and right now she doesn’t have such plans, but she understands that it might not be such a bad curse, after all.

 

* * *

 

Asuma’s death is still there, but at long last Kurenai understands, and maybe the feeling surrounding that understanding only appears just now, that it will always be there, and there is nothing much to do about it. It ripped a hole in her life, and still life continued, and now so much has grown, and even if that hole is still there, there is also so much else in life. She will always love him, his death will always be something that will be the reason for her undoing, but she can continue living with all that legacy, she feels.

She breathes, and knows that this doesn’t mean something is achieved, doesn’t mean something is concluded, that this is only a pause between life’s punches, but now she feels ready not to cower away from them, that there is also something else to life. But there is more to her than the resolution to now patiently await how life would unfold, she knows that she needs to act, that she will not be a passenger of the car, but the driver. The road unfurls in front of her, and she is ready to press on the pedal.

 

* * *

 

It always feels terribly, she guesses, to crave love as if that is the only saving grace left in the world. Maybe other people can do it, maybe other people can need it and not feel guilty for their apparent need, maybe they truly can be saved through the love they demand. But she’s been too afraid to do something like that. She could never demand the love, she knows how much love can be a prison.

But now, now that she feels, however temporarily, free, and she feels barely any guilt. She doesn’t love to possess, so how can that love be anything bad, when she herself feels just how ready she is to do anything for the wellbeing of those she loves, how much she only wants to care for them. Being Mirai’s mother at long last stops feeling like an exquisite torture, it becomes another fact of life, something miraculous some night, but usually yet another of life’s mysteries that can never be quite defined - it is complex and strange and nuanced and contradictory. But above all else, she loves her daughter, and she understands that if Mirai is ever to grow to be free and strong, and this will be something that will happen to her surely, so long as Kurenai does her best to protect her from anything too terrible, and with the miracle of unbreakable strength of human spirit even through the terrible, there will be little of Kurenai’s care in her daughter’s achievement of being strong and unafraid.

 

* * *

 

She finds Shikamaru away from the crowd, in their usual spot. He doesn’t live in Nara residency no more, but celebrations of his and Ino’s birthdays still take place here. Kurenai loves this place - the far away sound of people and music, but the strange quietness here even against that backdrop, the clear hill right in the middle of so many trees, the smell of cold autumn air. It only gets cold in the night right now, while the days remain melting.

She sits next to him, they both smile, acknowledging all the history of this place. Six years ago she was pregnant when Kurenai discovered that place for the first time.

Whenever they’d drift away, they always found one another here. It’s been quite a number of years since Kurenai came to birthdays, and so it feels like they drifted further away from each other. She had been so decisive in her resolution to push him out of her life, afraid she’ll entrap him, or he’ll undo her, or for so many other reasons that all made sense once.

Shikamaru is now closer to her age when she gave birth to Mirai than she is. When she was twenty-six, she and Asuma got married.

She leans on him, exhausted from fighting the pull of him.

“Hello,” - she says only to fill the air.

He melts into her. Strange how they can drift away, and yet always come back to the same closeness.

“Hi,” - he says softly back.

She thinks that so many reasons are now spent out - he is no longer a boy, she’s known him closely for as many years as Asuma did, so for her he is not only Asuma’s legacy, the pressure of her motherhood is no longer unwavering. And yet. There are always other reasons, aren’t there? Now his job is too demanding, now she is the one with the hopeless feelings, his stream of girls is the only constant in his romantic adventures. She wants to tell him, ‘Do you remember? You thought you loved me once,’ but is she ready to talk about that? Of course, she isn’t. The guiltless moment that seemed to be so healing has released her. She still feels good, but also no longer connected to the purity of the sensation that came at once, filled her with grace, and left, leaving behind only the knowledge that everything is alright, and will be alright. Well, maybe people aren’t meant to experience this life too purely, she’s had the moment when all the knots were untied, all mysteries solved, but perhaps in such purity the life itself ceases to exist.

She is jealous, her love turns possessive, and no longer pure. She is slightly ashamed of it, she is afraid to be ridiculed for her feelings - she is a widow facing her fourth decade. Still she loves him. Emotions do not care for reasons or propriety. She thinks of that love, it becomes a constant stream at the back of her head, at the forth of her mind - this beating pulsing love.

Her fear of many years ago that she would only fall for him because he is near, because he is convenient seems impossible at the moment. He isn’t near, their lives are constantly driving them away from each other, and only because both of them need to reach out, it is possible for them to remain near. He isn’t convenient. No, the greatest understanding that she cannot be a mere mirror to his desires is not the lack of his desire for her. It is the absurdity of the fact that she would know Shikamaru for who he is - somebody kind, sensitive, caring and responsible and not fall for him. She feared she’d fall for him because he is by her. But the truth is she fell for him because he is a great person, and she knows enough of the world, has seen enough of it, and talked to enough of people in it, to know how rare it is to meet somebody as good as Shikamaru is.

“I loved the fight,” - she says instead of all that.

“Thank you,” - he chuckles.

Naruto against Kakashi has been a great fight, but Kurenai thinks this was a fight that showed Shikamaru’s great abilities. It was a fight where every single movement of Kakashi had been predicted even before he went to the ring. When she and Raido discussed the fight, they decided that Shikamaru must’ve outlined near a thousand movements of Kakashi and told Naruto what do to in each combination.

It seemed almost fair when Sasuke immediately jumped into the ring right after Kakashi lost. The first battle showed that Shikamaru is better fitting to be a Hokage than Kakashi. The battle between Naruto and Sasuke, on the contrary, showed Naruto’s strength instead. Kurenai, much like the rest of the village has seen for the first time the sheer power of Kakashi’s students. They are living legends, but Kurenai for the first time has seen that they really are more powerful than Gods.

The fight of Naruto against Sasuke also had the great shadowed fight of Sakura against Shikamaru. Kurenai understood that Sakura and Sasuke are, in fact the more powerful team than Naruto and Shikamaru. And it is not only because Sasuke and Sakura has been part of the same team, and so know each other better, though that obviously gave them the great advantage. There were moments when a mere glance between Sasuke and Sakura seemed to carry entire conversations, they know each other so well and so well attuned to one another to know exactly what are the strengths and the weaknesses. And both exceptionally talented in genjutsu, so that the mind battle also played in their combined favour. They also are a better team simply because together they are a greater team - while Naruto is the strongest member of Team 7, both Sasuke and Sakura do not fall too far behind, so they two together are stronger than Shikamaru and Naruto. While Shikamaru is the smartest soldier in, perhaps, entire village, both Sasuke and Sakura are exceptionally smart, unlike Naruto, so together they can easily outsmart Shikamaru.

And, perhaps, if only the fight had to be a two-man battle, Sasuke and Sakura would’ve won. But as it was, it isn’t. Naruto and Sasuke were in the ring, while Shikamaru and Sakura could only occasionally scream their advices, and so the fight was not in truth about the teamwork, but about two separate fights - Naruto won against Sasuke because he is stronger than Sasuke, and all that possible because Shikamaru has outsmarted Sakura in their shadowed fight. Kurenai is sure that if only Sakura and Sasuke had the moment to converse to exchange their intel, they would’ve seen through Shikamaru’s game, but Sakura had to do that alone. Similarly, if only Sakura had been helping Sasuke in the fight, not matter who would’ve been Naruto’s helper, they would’ve won.

As it was, Naruto became the Seventh Hokage.

Entire village came to see the fight between the Sixth Hokage and his pupil, but the more interesting fight was the second, unexpected one.

Shikamaru sighs out and lays back on the grass.

“I’ll be busier than ever,” - he says, with disgust. Kurenai twists her upper body to watch his lay there. His arms behind his head, eyes closed, he doesn’t look too happy.

“You’ll be busier than ever,” - she repeats, not knowing what to offer. She wants to lie down, too, curl her body into his, but there was enough physical contact for the day.

“And Kakashi is free to do whatever,” - he mumbles, offended.

Kurenai thinks about it. “Kakashi is the real winner today, isn’t he?”

Shikamaru opens his eyes.

“Do you think he’ll start dating?”

Kurenai even smiles because of the unexpectedness of the question.

“Kakashi?” - she asks to be sure. Kakashi’s love life, if existing, is one of the mysteries of the village, much like his face beneath his mask.

She sends that last thought to Shikamaru.

He smiles at it. She wants to kiss him.

“Do you know that Naruto demanded me to outline the plan on how to rid Kakashi of his mask during the fight? Said it is just as important as him winning.”

“I think Obito and Rin have seen his face beneath it. They told us once that they did. They said that it makes absolute sense that Kakashi should wear his mask,” - they’d been so reluctant though to say exactly what Kakashi is hiding, so that all of them thought they are just making things up. She, Raido and Asuma had asked Sakumo about Kakashi’s face so many times, and he always gave them the most ridiculous answers - “Oh, Kakashi was born with that mask, I never seen the face beneath it”, “It is absolute horror. Me and my dearest have agreed that no one except us should see such terrible face, we forced him to wear that mask”, “Too beautiful, my son’s face is too beautiful for the world to handle. All those girls screaming, boys turning blue, who needs that?” and so on, each time a new story.

“Team 7 even had the plan to make Sasuke date Kakashi so that Sasuke would see his face.”

Kurenai even laughs, imagining that.

“They thought Kakashi would date Sasuke?”

“Why not? With that face who wouldn’t date Sasuke?”

“Would you?” - Kurenai asks in delight.

Shikamaru answers, fake-serious, “Those eyes... Sharingan really adds the colour, doesn’t it?”

“Such a great aesthete you are. Partial to pretty faces?” - Kurenai says, remembering all the girls he’s dated.

Shikamaru watches over her face, his gaze soft and tempting, “I kind of am.”

Kurenai even swallows because of potency of her desire, and twists her head to watch the woods.

Shikamaru sits up, and so she feels the warmth of him. She sat too close to him, but now she cannot place distance without looking unnatural.

“And what are you partial to?” - he asks, nudging his shoulder onto her, taking out the awkwardness of their sudden pause by not acknowledging it.

Kurenai smiles, thinking of it. To talk about that with Shikamaru? But she doesn’t back out.

“Well, I’m not partial to pretty faces,” - she answers, not knowing what else to add.

“I think I just heard Asuma’s ghost saying ‘Ouch’.”

Kurenai smiles. But Shikamaru presses onward. “But there was Genma?”

Kurenai looks at him, and nudges him back. “Shut up,” - she says softly, not meaning a word.

“So what does Kakashi have to have beneath his mask to tempt you?”

He doesn’t let her go after her nudge and presses further into her side. The warmth he brings against chilly wind is not as pleasant as the sensation of him being near her is.

She drops her head onto his shoulder, seeking that warmth, “I don’t think Kakashi can tempt me.”

“Yeah?” - he asks her gently, pressing further onto her. His head touches her hair.

She thinks it would be so natural for her to extend her arm and hug him from behind. And no less natural it would be for her to twist a bit more and kiss him, softly, not at all like all those kisses before. Shikamaru might not even mind, is this how he sits with those other girls, Kurenai wonders. Only, it’d be worse. It is impossible for her to be a one-night stand.

“Is there anyone alive who can tempt you?” - he asks so quietly, Kurenai can pretend not to hear.

She answers before she has the time to think, melted against his smell and warmth, “Of course.”

Often, she needs to be very attuned to Shikamaru to feel his emotions, because he controls them with great power, but right now the tension that zips through him almost makes a sound, is almost visible.

He is no longer melted against her - he is hard, but she still can’t stop herself and remains plastered to his side.

“Who?” - he asks, voice a drastic change from their previous mood.

Kurenai breathes out. She thinks she needs to move away from him, she needs to turn this into a joke, she needs to make a vague suggestion hinting at the answer, but also running away from being the truth, she needs to tell him that this was only meant to mean that she is now ready for people who are alive to tempt her, that’s all. But, right now, as she is still being near him, she cannot force herself to rip herself away from him, instead she presses further. His smell and the warmth of his skin are telling her what she wants to feel and hope for, but the tension of him suggests something different. He is so smart, of course he can see through her, and that is why he tenses against her. She thinks they’ve come full circle and she’ll now be the one kicked out with hopeless feelings.

She sees how he watches her - his eyes are so filled to the brim with something, but with such emotion against which she turns hopeless. When he looks at her like that, she can only tell the truth.

“You. It’s you I love.”

The longest beat passes. The strange something rips through Shikamaru’s body. He brings his hands onto her elbows and squeezes her hands tightly, but she sees in his face that he isn’t registering it. He turns her to face him. His face is strange.

“I can’t believe you just called me ugly,” - he says, voice hoarse, pushing the words out.

Kurenai laughs. She could fly, she is that elated. His face says it all.

“Not pretty. And only compa-“

She doesn’t have the time or breath to continue because she falls back to the grass with Shikamaru on top of her, stealing her air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were following the updates closely, you know that the last chapter will be uploaded on June, 35st :)


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: some violence, minor character death. And yes, I realize the irony of claiming the death to be the end in the world where recreation is proved.

Shikamaru remembers that time when Mirai was about four, and he and Kurenai brought her to the lake to splash around. As they overlooked Mirai playing, they sat at the sand and talked. His father approached them out of nowhere, talked about nothing and left. Shikamaru wouldn't have remembered that episode if not for the scene that happened later, at evening, when they were dining.

In most disgusting words, Shikaku has said that Shikamaru, of course, is free to fuck anything he wishes, so long as he remembers that he has to deliver an heir to this clan, and that his wife is to be pure, not soiled by another’s man touch.

Shikamaru never wished to kill his father more than that day. He contemplated between picking a fight with him, or laughing out loud at his moronic observation. Back then, his father’s words were cruel also in their irony. His observation was so wrong it almost hurt more than the offence to Kurenai.

In the end, he simply excused himself, and walked for the whole night. Next day, in the morning, he’s already been moving out. His father asked him if that is his answer - that he doesn’t want to do anything with Nara, and Shikamaru wanted to tell him that yes, of course, Mirai is his only heir, of course he doesn’t want to have anything to do with being Nara, but he also thought back then, that if it were more comfortable for Kurenai to see him married and then for him to have a child, that he would do it. He said nothing and left.

His father caught a whiff of him being seen with some girl, took that as an answer to their spat, and thought little about Shikamaru living away from his parents. He’s probably even told to Inoichi and Chouza that Shikamaru only wanted to live independently.

Throughout years, there were jokes here and there that suggested his parents felt some kind of unease at his relationships with Kurenai and Mirai, that they could see through him.

In a way, Shikamaru should expect what his parents do when they hear about him and Kurenai. They scream, that’s the expected, Shikaku wants to talk to Kurenai, for some reason having the idea that she is the one who’s seduced him and left him without a choice, only to worm herself and her daughter into the Nara clan, Shikamaru barely manages to stop him. The regular talk doesn’t work, so Shikamaru has to threat him into obeying. Thankfully, Shikamaru’s rank is higher than his father’s. They loudly disown him, leave him moneyless and forbid him from having any privileges of being Nara - they inform him that so long as he insists in his disgrace of being with his teacher’s widow, he will never step a foot into the residency.

Shikamaru is really surprised that this is the best his parents have come up with to scare him - he is now the second person in the village, he earns his own money, what does he care about being Nara heir when he is Hokage’s advisor? And he has a place to live.

When Shikamaru shrugs at all of their rules, his mother begins wailing, his father settles further in his antagonization of Kurenai, sure that everything is her deed only - that she is the black widow, that she manipulated him, that she groomed him.

Not that he wouldn’t throw all his parents hold against him into their faces in any other situation, but it’s feels nice to tell his parents that there isn’t anything they can take from him, that he’s built a life for himself, away from them, away from that family, the one that is better, stronger.

In some ways, he is almost happy because of the entire ugly business with his parents. No, he feels terrible, feels ashamed, especially for and in front of Kurenai and Mirai, and tries to shield them as much as he can from that ugly situation.

He is happy because it proves that this isn’t some genjutsu of the enemy that only lulls him, his discomfort, which is such a slight thing compared to his bliss, is the proof that all of this is real. It almost feels good to be brought down from his clouds, it feels good to know that this thing is so real, it is already changing something in his life, that other people see it, too. Fuck, it almost feels good at long last to have fights with his parents about it, because it allows him to sink only further into enjoying it, as he is allowed to talk about it.

A few months after his parents learn about him and Kurenai, Ino, after a very loud break up with Chouji, very loudly and shamelessly, starts dating Sakura. Shikamaru sees that through the misplaced pity Shikaku feels for Inoichi, his father almost thinks himself lucky.

Inoichi, much like Ino, barely cares about that. He is the sort of doting and caring and loving father who congratulates himself with noting everything that Ino does as the pinnacle of human’s achievements.

Still, Shikaku is stunned, Shikamaru knows it. Poor Inoichi, not only the only out of three to give birth to a girl, but also to a deviant girl? That, at the very least, distracts him away from screaming at Shikamaru.

Much later, when he and Kurenai will be almost settled in everyone’s mind, when Chouji will start dating Naruto, Shikaku will even congratulate himself with his all-around perfect son.

The perfection of Shikamaru’s life scares him. He thinks he should never be allowed to have so much, he fears to get used to the constant bliss of his life, sure that this is only temporary. And, hell, he knows it is temporary. People who are better and kinder than him do not manage to salvage their relationships against the force of time or habit or differences or force of life itself. Shikamaru has seen enough to know that just because, for whatever madness, Kurenai is with him now, it doesn’t mean she is now tied to him, doesn’t mean he won’t lose her.

He does wonder if the marriage would help, overtaken with the idea that this is the only way a person can be tied one to another. He knows of divorces, but at least the paper-filling will give him the time to do something before they are filled out. He would get married to Kurenai instantly, but he realizes that, surely, he has to wait.

Unlike the marriage, though, he, Kurenai and Mirai start to live together without preambles. After his birthday, they picked Mirai and lulled her to sleep. Thankfully, Shikamaru has bought the apartment with the room for Mirai. Shikamaru was jumping out of his bones while waiting, afraid that he is misunderstanding something, missing something crucial. Or that it is yet again the repetition of what he’s begged to be repeated - the only night he’s spent with Kurenai. But right then, as there was something more impossible unfolding, he could barely believe it. Kurenai and Mirai stayed at his apartment for a full week after that.

He bought the apartment in the hopeless dream he is buying a house for all three of them, and to have it exactly how he imagined it being in his wildest dreams was delirious. Each night he lay next to Kurenai, his desire at long last welcome, at last he was able to release it fully upon her, each night he’d sleep, hugging her close to him, each morning they’d wake together, more often than not by Mirai walking in and waking them - she is the only early riser in the house.

Kurenai has said that they should probably try to take things slower, and so, after a week, she and Mirai went back to their apartment. Shikamaru understood for the first time just how big he bought the house, when he paced the length of it that day.

He remembered his first night with Kurenai and his absolute sureness that if he ever to let her go, she will awaken and understand their situation. And that has happened to be true. The morning came and the spell was broken. He is afraid something like that will happen during that first night of Kurenai being away from him. The morning will come and she will realize her mistake, and she will tell him that she hadn’t meant a word, that it was only the madness, grief, alcohol, whatever else speaking.

The next day Kurenai comes to his apartment with boxes of necessities. “Is it alright if Mirai and I stay here?”, she asks like he hasn’t been praying for this exactly.

They start living together without discussing it properly. Kurenai and Mirai just settle inside his apartment, Shikamaru gives them the keys. When another month comes and Kurenai has to pay for her nearly empty apartment, she asks his opinion, and he says it’d be a waste of her money, and surprisingly, she agrees. Shikamaru feels like he can breathe a little bit easier.

It is so easy and natural that there has to be a catch somewhere. Shikamaru tells himself to remember to look out for the signs, not to lose his mind, not to think that the battle is done. He reminds himself that, even if they know each other, they are learning to see one another in a different light, that this is only a period of them trying. Though, he finds everything he’s always suspected being together with Kurenai to be almost like he’s imagined it to be, at least in the emotional sense of his dreams - he is just as joyous as he thought he’d be. There are differences in activities done, discussions raised, sure, but emotionally it is just what he dreamed for. The entire situation - his dreads, his worries, his lack of understanding cannot restraint within it how happy he feels each day, each minute of each day, it is almost like he has to learn to handle this new contentment, this deep settlement inside, the one that persists even more in the face of such unstableness, he almost feels like he is walking a tightrope, about to fall from his heights down.

When they wash the dishes, he asks Kurenai carefully about her thoughts on marriage, not being particularly subtle.

“I’m done with marriage, Shikamaru,” - Kurenai replies gently, leaning onto his side to take the sting of her words.

Shikamaru thinks that this only proves that he cannot trust the blissful moment, there is no guarantee in tomorrow, even if he does understand that Kurenai, as usual isn’t thinking about him and his worries, but about her own situation. But this is his try-outs, this is his battle, he tells himself, this is only a period when they are trying to be someone they never were to each other, and if Kurenai asks him to release her, he must be ready to do it.

But to have these kind of worries only seems to add greatly to the joy of his state. Each day he wakes, remembers the sheer impossibility of his state, dreads for it to end, knows that it can end, and doesn’t believe that it still lasts, and remains dumbly, offensively happy.

Naruto tells him to get out of the office, and signs his leave (he also leaves team 8’s missions within the village), so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to make him the Hokage. Shikamaru almost feels bad, but Naruto tells him he’d really like to have a lot of work right now, what’s with his break-up with Sakura. Shikamaru even thinks that he looks way too cheerful after the love of his life has dumped him, but maybe that is the reason Sakura broke up with him. Sakura isn’t someone secondary to anything, especially not her boyfriend’s job. Chouji, who comes often to replace Shikamaru, being the absolute saint, tells Shikamaru that, no, of course, Naruto is heart-broken, and, well, Chouji isn’t the one to lie, so Shikamaru feels a bit less uneasy about it.

No, Shikamaru remembers quite well that things, especially such ephemeral thing as love, aren’t meant to last. Which makes him hold on to what’s happening to him with all his might.

And he thinks that he needs to have his doubts.

That first night when he and Kurenai were at long last inside his room, on that first day of it becoming Kurenai’s room, too, he was torn between his desires - he couldn’t stop touching her, kissing her, and at the same time, he wished not to distract her, and at long last to talk.

“When did you know?” - he asked, the question occurring to him in the middle of mind-blowing kiss. His hands never left their place on her warm skin, it was almost distracting , but he forced himself to focus on Kurenai’s answer.

“Can’t say,” - she says so gently, her eyes radiating softly. He keeps looking, expecting continuation, but also absolutely mesmerized by her face, traces each line the way before he could do only from the side or from a memory.

She says nothing, only nudges his cheek, her hand on his neck, her fingers tracing a swirling pattern on his skin.

Kurenai remains being so quiet, and yet so open, but she says nothing. He wants to tell her about all those women, but doesn’t know how to start the conversation, and expects her question to give him an idea, but she doesn’t ask. Shikamaru doesn’t quite know what to think - he doesn’t feel shyness in Kurenai, he feels how open she is to his questions, but she asks nothing, and she replies by saying next to nothing to his questions.

He’s had years to observe Kurenai, to analyze her. And he’s always suspected that she hides a lot of herself deep inside, perhaps, much like anyone else. But only her quietness, only her reasons he wanted to uncover and to learn of, he wanted to know what she thinks of, what she thought of.

Surprisingly, nothing changes in terms of their conversations. He’s thought once that she is only being discreet because she viewed him a boy, and didn’t wish to talk about her thoughts, dreams or ideas with him. Right now, they are dating (silly word, Shikamaru thinks), and nothing changes in terms of their conversations. They talk lightly, or even not at all. Truthfully, this was one other thing he used to dream of, for what he desired almost as much as he desired for Kurenai’s body. He wished to know her, he wished to be able to talk to her in such way as to know everything she might think of, he wanted to own her mind as much as he wanted to own her body.

He is worried about that lack of conversation, thinking that maybe even now Kurenai can’t trust him, maybe something is wrong.

And then, one day, he is laying down on the roof, after work. After twenty-six hours long workday. Naruto seemed to have forgotten about Shikamaru’s signed leave, though maybe with the office they’ve taken, the leave is something imaginary. Kurenai finds him, he feels her thought reaching out to him, only to say that it’s her, so as not to scare him. And then she lays down next to him, and so they lay, without words, in complete peace for hours until Shikamaru feels less braindead.

When he stands up and gives Kurenai hand to lift her up, he suddenly understands that usually he was made to explain his exhaustion to those he dated. But did he want to explain it? It was nice to lay down with Kurenai, and not form the words of what has happened during his day. It was, after all, a stupid thing to even talk about, to waste energy of, to cloud Kurenai’s mind with the explanation.

Shikamaru has dated a lot, and he has obeyed the rules of regular dating. One of the biggest ones was the need for conversation - he needed to tell his entire life to another person, he needed to tell all the thoughts he’s thought of throughout the day to that other person, he needed to lay bare, to tell his history, to explain everything about him to someone else. He’s thought good relationship mean clear understanding of another person, the one that is achieved solely through worded explanation, so in the end the relationship is founded deeply on the dialogue. But, the truth is, he isn’t the one to talk. And he knows that Kurenai isn’t either. Isn’t it what he wanted, what he always wanted? The silence, the peace, the lack of anything to do. The communication is an activity, and activities of any kind are foreign to him and unpleasant. He was willing to sacrifice it all, because he learned that love is the exact opposite of that, he was willing to be talking. And now he thinks that, perhaps, all his rules of romantic relationships were founded on exceptionally unimaginative ideas.

What if his love allowed him to remain same, to not do what he doesn’t want to be doing? Isn’t it why he was so attracted to Kurenai in the first place - drawn by her similarity to him, falling in love first of all with the life that was possible near her those first days he was getting to know her - their wordless conversations, her quiet unpressing nature, so unlike anyone he’s known, so similar in providing him with the feeling before only the views of the skies and clouds were giving him - the true peace.

He’s thought his relationship with Kurenai will become entirely different, but how could they? They remained same people, exactly the same people that have already built the relationship that suited them both. Now, they only shed the rules of propriety that were restraining them, and, well, ended up with what they have.

Anyhow, Shikamaru is comfortable with their relationships, he settles in that thought about six months later, and decides that it must account for something, that this might be a good merit for vouching for the fact that everything is going well, even if it goes against his or societal expectations.

Shikamaru watches Kurenai closely, and hopes he is bringing her some enjoyment and some happiness, and he likes to think that he does ease her life, at least a bit. He judges that from the fact that Mirai is suddenly a handful, who knew that living with a child is so hard, even compared to occasionally baby-sitting that child? He hopes that the fact that Mirai is suddenly harder for him to take care of means that he’s taken some of Kurenai’s load.

And if so, if Kurenai is comfortable, too, right where they are, and so is Mirai, Shikamaru resolves, they must be doing alright for themselves.

However, he doesn’t feel stable, he doesn’t feel like this is the end, he feels everything, on the contrary, only beginning to change.

There is his job. His terrible job that Shikamaru hates with all his might some days of the week. The job that will allow him to prevent something like what’s happened to Kurenai on that mission from happening ever again. He’ll never quit it, no matter how much it steals him from Kurenai.

“You should just stay here, with me,” - Kurenai says as he is laying on top of her in their bed one late afternoon, as she probes his mind and senses his mood. She is sitting, as she was reading just a moment ago.

Shikamaru smiles, and presses his face into her belly. Underneath the jasmine soap she uses, he senses her own smell, the one he can’t get enough of.

“Forever?”

“I’ll quit my job, you’ll quit yours, we’ll speed up our boredom with each other,” - she says dreamily.

’Stay in bed,’ - Shikamaru opens his mind to the idea, already seeing them stuck permanently as they are now. This bed allowed him to live his happiest life in it.

Kurenai inserts her palm into his hair and massages his scalp.

It feels impossible that he should ever grow bored of her, Shikamaru thinks, even though he feels how open his mind is. He doesn’t know whether he wants Kurenai to feel the thought or not.

She senses it, he knows it because she replies by opening her mind and showing the flush of pleasure she feels. He isn’t the one to get all sappy, but Kurenai likes it, so he enjoys bringing her the pleasure.

In moments like these he thinks he can’t mind the fact that this relationship between him and Kurenai isn’t at all what he wanted it to be.

This connection is great. This is easy, this allows him to be so lazy. Shikamaru only learns that through all the years of his unrequited love, he’s restrained himself too tightly against the honest chant of his mind, and it feels so good to release it all out at last, to be lazy even in his desires, passive to them, let them ride him out. And he doesn’t restrain himself from thinking the chant that filled his brain when he was nineteen, - ‘I love you, I love you, I do…"

 _Mad about you_ , he thinks instead, each day, each half-formed conversation being instead about that, the one thought he’s had about Kurenai since he was nineteen - crazy for you, mad about you, love you so much. He moves to kiss her, happy that this is now allowed.

 

* * *

 

Ino prepares a protein cocktail for her and Sakura when he comes visiting them. And, fuck, Genma is here, too.

Shikamaru wonders if he ever sates his jealousy. That stupid Genma, with all his stupid handsomeness is an absolute tool, as it is apparent now. Shikamaru freaking went out of his way to send him to a top-secret mission to save Mizukage. Desperate to get married Mizukage. Beautiful, powerful, desperate for a husband Mizukage.

Everything looked alright, very expected outcome, when Genma was there. Hell, even Konoha’s relationships with Amegakure improved - Mei came here often. And then, bam, out of nowhere, Mei married Guy.

The thing is, between moping for his teammate’s wife, Genma seems quite settled in his mind that all of that is Shikamaru’s fault, so he comes often to their home, late at night, usually with Raido for propriety, but these days even without him, for a drink and long night round of complaining.

Shikamaru doesn’t want to think that this isn’t actually a revenge plot from Genma, but a genuine desire to be with Kurenai, the only one who understands him, or so he claims after two or more drinks.

“So, Shikamaru, is there anyone you have in mind for me?” - Genma starts, cocking his eyebrow, still holding up his coolness like shield after all the pummeling it took. Lost a girl to Guy, Guy!

“Kakashi,” - Shikamaru offers, preferring not to notice entire butt of the joke Genma wants to make of him.

Ino and Genma make a perfect pair together, whenever they are two near each other they simply enjoy edging each other on as to who will make Shikamaru the biggest clown. Shikamaru has exactly zero regrets about his life choices, for anyone who asks.

And then, before Genma has the time to to say anything in reply, Shikamaru adds the selling point, “Do you know what’s behind his mask?”, which makes even Genma stutter.

Kakashi, in Shikamaru’s opinion, after being released from Hokage’s duties, has too much time on his hands.

“First of all, yes!” - Sakura says, as she comes through the open door. Sasuke shadows her behind.

Shikamaru notices Ino’s eye roll, and then she says quietly to them both in the kitchen, “you’d think he lives here.” It relieves Shikamaru to know that it isn’t only Naruto that Sasuke stalks around constantly. Shikamaru wonders why Sasuke comes here to Sakura. Probably not because he wants to pick up fights with her, the way he does every other day at the office.

“I thinks we all need a solid plan on how to reveal Kakashi’s face,” - Sakura continues, marching into the kitchen. She comes to Ino and kisses her by dragging Ino’s face close to hers. Their unashamedness makes all three of them feel uneasy, Shikamaru notices that even Sasuke and Genma lower their gazes. There is also something too impressive about Sakura’s biceps, impressive as in invoking-the-fear-of-God-traumatizing.

“First of all, you can’t even complain, you’re absolute gross when you’re with Kurenai,” - Ino points at Shikamaru as soon as Sakura lets her breathe. Her freaking hand looks all tough and muscled, and Shikamaru is legitimately happy their team is stronger than ever, but he also doesn’t really like the fear her biceps make him feel. Unlike Sakura’s teammates, he is no Sasuke or Naruto, he won’t survive the mountain-shattering punch.

“He is gross,” - Genma immediately agrees with Ino, the way he tends to do.

“Absolute worst, Naruto has shown me the documents where Kurenai’s name is written on again and again,” - Sakura says, and Sasuke nods behind her.

Shikamaru flushes. To be fair to him, he was working on a plan, but he has no time to save his face before all of them get distracted while making him the center of the joke with his infatuation.

And honestly, the sheer insolence of all of them. He is the second person in the village, he is Hokage’s first advisor. He’ll fucking find a proper mission for all of them, Shikamaru thinks. Genma will escort Mizukage and her husband to Amegakure. He will find a mission for Naruto and Sasuke to let their glorious leader drive his best friend mad. He’ll send Ino…

 

* * *

 

It is a testament to how good Kurenai is at all things professional, because it takes about six months for team 8 to catch the whiff of the latest advantage of their teacher’s life. Embarrassingly, Shikamaru understands that it probably wouldn’t have even happened if not for him. He suddenly understands that all the people who know of them, know of it because of him. Even Kurenai’s mother.

He guesses someone from their class have told them, Shikamaru likes to think it is Ino, but most likely it is Naruto.

It is kind of hard to be working with a person who basically asks to be punched in the face. Shikamaru thinks that when he agreed to make Naruto the leader of their village, he’s forgot just how dumb everyone’s hero is.

Team 8 crowd him before he has the time to react in the dark alley, and he surrenders immediately. Freaking Akamaru is only growing bigger and bigger, Shikamaru doesn’t try to think on what Kiba must be feeding his pup to form all those bones, he’s aiming for elephant’s weight, he is nothing to Hinata’s byakugan and even though, technically, he could take Shino out, he doesn’t think he wants to. Shikamaru can be squeaky about bugs.

“You and Kurenai?!” - Kiba hollers once Shikamaru is pinned to the wall.

“It is a surprise to us, Shikamaru, that we must learn of it after everyone else,” - Shino says offendedly.

“You must treat her good,” - Hinata concludes with her strange crystal voice, the one that scares Shikamaru more than Akamaru’s bark or Shino’s bugs.

Not for the first time, Shikamaru thinks that team 8 is, to put it mildly, weird.

He slumps by the wall, considers his choices, then sighs, and invites team 8 to their apartment.

Soon, after tea Shikamaru makes for them (objectively bad, but it turns out none of them know how to make it either, Kiba has been raised with dogs, Shino with bugs and Hinata as a princess, it is surprising if they even can do anything regular people must be doing), the three of team 8 remember that they are in fact, comrades to Shikamaru, and are no longer spitting fury, being mad because they haven’t been told of, or because Shikamaru needs to take good care of Kurenai, Shikamaru is sure their fury spits evenly between those two offences. And so they talk instead about Mirai, the only safe topic Shikamaru stumbles upon in his search for something neutral to talk about.

Thank God for Mirai. She is six, she learns to throw kunai, she is good at taijutsu, receives low marks for all her tests, and as it turns out, all four of them are teaching Mirai some of their inherited ninjutsu, which might explain why she is so bad at studying, her chakra all spent after additional hours of studying. But then, maybe it doesn’t. Shikamaru knows that Kurenai is in fact not teaching Mirai anything, even though it is apparent that Mirai has inherited her eyes.

“Some people are good students, some aren’t,” - she tells him one day after his long session with Mirai in which nothing was achieved, with all the grace of someone who’s been a teacher for quite some time. - “it’s good that she isn’t a good student, almost like she’s been made for peace, not war,” Kurenai decides, somehow making even her rightful evaluation of Mirai’s shortcomings a forecast of something good growing in Mirai, in the true mothering fashion. Shikamaru tried to block his mind from her then, and hid his smile. Kurenai would take that he is laughing at her, but, no, he was only feeling softened and fond of that.

“Mirai told me she’ll marry me when she is grown up,” - Kiba says proudly as they start telling their favourite jokes related to Mirai.

“But wrong you are, Kiba, for Mirai has told me it is me who will be her husband,” - Shino objects, and so Shikamaru has to restrain the part of him that just insists on jumping out and telling all of them, that no, Mirai has told him she’ll marry him.

Hinata says, “Oh, but she said she’d marry me,” and they all sit down, chastened, while Hinata smiles serenely.

Kurenai and Mirai herself join them soon after, and all of them go to their places all around Mirai, circling her like she is their sun, the gravitational center, the place Mirai accepts with joy, happiness and grace, and tells them bubbling with pleasure of everything that has happened in the academy. She’s beaten up a boy (“Mirai, it is nothing to be proud of,” - Kurenai chastises her, but Shikamaru is sure the boy had it coming), she’s seen a very cool bug, she has decided that her most favourite in all the planets bug is now changed, and then she swerves into another lane and asks all of them which bug is their in all the planets favourite bug, the question that Shino takes very seriously.

Shikamaru wonders about Mirai’s childhood, one of so few kids born during the war, fatherless, but surrounded by so many people.

And she will always be. She has only one surviving parent, but it seems as though so many people have taken the role of being parental figures for her. How many other heirs of other clans have had the same talk with their parents that Shikamaru had - that, no, there won’t be heirs to their lines, there already is Mirai. Shikamaru realizes right now that it is highly probable that entire team 8 will not have children.

Their weirdness is probably the result of all of them being a bit isolated, though that word is a bit wrong. They are isolated from society, this is the weirdness everyone feels around them, they are a bit untrained in societal manners. They are lonely in a sense where you don’t speak to other people, but apart from that they have built other conversations - Kiba with his dog, Shino with his bugs, and Hinata with the nature itself. No, even though Shikamaru knows that his assessment can be wrong, other people have been surprising him before, still Shikamaru is sure that none of them will marry, none of them will have children, and in that sense Mirai will be the child they’ll direct all their need for kids into. He is sure that none of them will marry because he sees how happy they are in their current state - all single for so many years, and they are just as happy as Shikamaru feels himself to be, as content as he is. And he knows that you don’t give up this type of content easily.

 

* * *

 

Late at night, while they prepare for the bed, Shikamaru shows Kurenai his thoughts about her students - how they seem content in their loneliness, he has a realization and closes his mind to ponder on it. Kurenai is a lot like her students, he thinks. Content in her loneliness, and even when she is with him or Mirai, she doesn’t quite let go of it. She lets them be near, but all without conversation, without discussion, and in that sense both he and Mirai can be equally much a dog, or bugs, or a forrest.

Kurenai says, not noticing him shutting his mind out suddenly, all while she keeps undressing, but does it so slowly it becomes sinful, “I always thought that all teams are made of people that are alike.”

“Did you?” - she’s taken her shirt off, so Shikamaru doesn’t really hold the line of the conversation too tightly in his mind. He restricts himself from touching her, it is a little experiment he promised himself he’d try out. He feels like he is constantly the one to initiate their sex, and he’s promised himself that at least for a month he’ll let Kurenai take a lead, to see how much sex she wants to be having.

“Yes, take your team, you all are so popular, the real cool kids,” - which almost distracts Shikamaru, because, what?

She sees his distrusted face, and laughs. He is definitely not going to be seduced by it. He’s been definitely having more than enough sex in those months to be viewing her body with some kind feeling of habit, surely.

“Why are you surprised? Ino is the prom queen, there is not a person who doesn’t like Chouji…”

“And me?”

“You’ve literally had more girls in your bed than you can count,” - she nudges him. He is standing dumbly, afraid to move. She is fully undressed.

“It wasn’t…” - Shikamaru tries to explain, this is his chance to explain it all, he’s wanted to explain everything to Kurenai for so long, but right now she is undressing him. While she unbuttons his shirt, she caresses all the skin that opens up to her.

“Genma told me that he doesn’t understand why you are so popular with girls, you know that?” - it is hard. Genuinely hard - to be torn up equally by lust and jealousy. Shikamaru feels depths in Genma’s phrase that Kurenai doesn’t notice. - “But it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? You view dating as a battle, you execute strategies, all measured - flowers, notes, presents…”

Her hand goes lower and lower.

“Not with you,” - Shikamaru can’t be sure this is the right thing to say, he tries to convey something different, he’s been prepared to explain all this to Kurenai, but he only pants when he tries to say more.

“Never liked all of that,” - Kurenai crunches her nose. How is everything so easy with Kurenai? Is it just her kindness or are the relationship between people truly that uncomplicated?

He wants to tell her what gorged on feminist literature Temari has told him - that chivalrous romance is the most misogynistic thing to subject a woman to, not the truth he shares, but something that he planned to use when explaining Kurenai all those women around him, even though she was there, too. But he can’t, and maybe that’s for the better. Instead he at long last forgets himself and chases her lips mere breaths away from his, and kisses her.

 

* * *

 

Later, sated after sex, Shikamaru will feel yet again the annoyance at himself. He’s had a plan, he thinks.

“What plan?” - his and Kurenai’s minds are too entangled for her not to pick his thoughts up.

Shikamaru feels himself redden and hides deeper into her hair.

Kurenai is very curious, he feels it. With a sigh, he forfeits.

“Do you think we’re having too much sex?”

Which makes her laugh. Great, Shikamaru’s definitely expected that. But even though he hates being laughed at, he enjoys the joy on her face, and forgives her immediately.

“We’ve been having up to twenty rounds on some days,” - he explains, but that only makes her laugh even more.

“Oh,” - she draws out, mockingly, but still, amazingly, kindly. - “What am I to do with the prowess of my young lover?"

When she spends out her laughs, she sobers up, and says, “There were days I couldn’t even walk,” and then her face spits into a smile.

Shikamaru doesn’t know if she is joking or not, so he decides to wait in dignified silence. But it’s hard to resist her, so he smiles back.

Kurenai gets more serious, and then asks, “Do you think we’re having too much sex?”

“No,” - what an absurd idea. In Shikamaru’s perfect world, he wouldn’t do anything except having sex with her. He’s had something like that in Madara’s genjutsu, but then he was so guilty of his fantasies that he forced himself to forget all about that world. - “But do you?”

“What?”

“Well, do you have trouble walking?”

Kurenai takes a look of his eyes and then hides her face in the pillow to laugh some more.

Why the hell it is so sexy? She just laughs, worse - she laughs at him. But there is something about being allowed to see Kurenai so happy near him, to be the one to make her laugh that is working on him. He moves his body, so that he lays on top of her. He kisses her shoulder.

Kurenai stops laughing, probably, because she feels him hard against her. With her hand she guides him to the right place. They both sigh out together.

“I think, I’m alright with our sex,” - she says, and he takes that as a permission to start moving.

 

* * *

 

And later, still, Shikamaru will remember their conversation, right as they are falling asleep.

“What about Team 7?” - he whispers, in case Kurenai is already sleeping.

“Sporty kids,” - Kurenai mumbles and then turns away from him.

Oh, Shikamaru thinks, that makes sense. Team 7 is, of course, the jocks.

 

* * *

 

Kurenai doesn’t speak for entire month. Shikamaru doesn’t know if she doesn’t speak with him only, or if it is a vow of silence that extends to the entire world with the exception to her daughter. He suspects that she doesn’t even notice it, she is rarely cruel, she only does this thing that is cruel to him because she doesn’t notice him. And that hurts just as much as it would hurt if she tried to deliberately shut him out, the fact that she just forgets about him.

The pain brings back the memories, and Shikamaru thinks that no one has hurt him in his life the way Kurenai was hurting him. He remembers the teenage heartbreak he endured because she pushed him out, again and again, through the time, the thing she does now, too, the thing she hasn’t stopped doing when they got together. The unbearable pain of seeing her dying - during Pain’s invasion, of thinking she’s dead during that moronic, idiotic, stupid mission - their village took entire month to retrieve her, Shikamaru couldn’t even stand to watch her after that failure, he thought he is to shame, much like the rest of the village, they haven’t saved her fast enough, he still couldn’t think about everything Kurenai had to endure. And even the pain that brought them two together in the first place - the pain right after Asuma’s death. Shikamaru knows that Kurenai pushes him out whenever she feels pain, and that is more painful that if she were deliberately cruel, if she were bored of him and tried to place distance between them - that she is so kind, she doesn’t want him to share her pain, doesn’t want to force him to endure her torture. And so she suffers alone, but Shikamaru still feels pain for her.

They both tiptoe around normalcy for the sake of Mirai, so Kurenai does speak to Mirai, and answers her questions, even the ones that must hurt to answer.

“Where is grandma now?” - Mirai is eight, and in a way this is the first time she is brushing up with the death, obviously the only thing she feels is curiosity, the one that might seem cruel in it’s absent of grief.

Kurenai doesn’t believe in life after death, neither does he, so they both struggle with the answer. It’d be so easy to brush it off with, ’She is at the sky now, watching you down,’ but it feels wrong, and so they grasp at the words.

“She is gone,” - Kurenai tries, but he sees in her face that she is dissatisfied with her answer, this implies her mother is still somewhere.

“She died, Mirai,” - Shikamaru explains, trying to say the words with the finality he and Kurenai both believe the death to be. He is afraid that he might infuriate Kurenai by inserting himself into this moment with her daughter. But she turns to him, and though she doesn’t smile, by her nod, he sees that she is grateful. This is most contact they had between each other in a month, Shikamaru feels almost childish because of his relief at that sign. Kurenai is grieving, and here he is, only worrying about their relationship with each other.

Kurenai busies herself with packing. The mission is supposed to be one of the longest in her career, and definitely the longest since Mirai’s birth, but she has asked Shikamaru to give her something of a kind, and he did. She’s asked to go alone, but Shikamaru protested that he couldn’t do that.

“Alright,” - Kurenai agreed, it looked like she was only too tired to argue with him then. - “But not with my team. Send me with Kakashi. Or Raido.”

He sends himself with Kurenai, not even trying to be subtle in his care for her, even though she brushes it off, even though she doesn’t seem to notice it or care about it.

Kurenai is now packing his things, he tries to argue, but it is pointless, she doesn’t hear him. Shikamaru decides to think that this might actually be preferable to Kurenai - she probably wants to be busy, and not think of anything.

 

* * *

 

Amegakure is cloudy, the fog is chilling, the air crystal and pleasant to breathe.

They settle the camp by the river, concealing themselves in it’s roar. His usual mantra directed at Kurenai that is omnipresent has gained another voice that only begs her, speak to me, talk to me, say something to me, allow me help you, I love you, I love you.

Late at night, right after the dinner, when they both make themselves comfortable in the tent, Shikamaru remembers every fact of Kurenai’s mother’s death.

She’s had a heart attack, but a mild one. Shikamaru still remembers his surprise at learning Kurenai’s mother’s age. Only fifty-three. She’s looked much older. Only seventeen years older than Kurenai. Kurenai’s mother was younger than his parents.

At first, when she was hospitalized, everything looked, relatively, fine. She has awakened after operation, she told them she felt alright, they were awaiting for her to gain some strength for another operation, crucial to her health, but, at least to Shikamaru, nothing then seemed to be too dangerous. She was younger than his parents. Kurenai and Mirai visited her daily, even though the allotted time for visitors hasn’t been too big. Shikamaru did what he could to learn everything about Kurenai’s mother’s condition. He informed every doctor to notify him for a sign of any kind of trouble, any time of the day.

And then two weeks after the first heart attack, at night she’s suffered another heart attack. She was run immediately to the operation table, where, after five hours, she was declared dead.

And Kurenai hasn’t spoken, not really, since that time. He thought he was used to her quietness, to her reserved nature, but realizes that before, in fact, she’s been warm and responsive to him. She is cold, and he doesn’t quite know what to make of that wall she places between them. He understands that grief shows itself differently in different people, but he can’t help but wish for Kurenai to explain him something, to open up even a little bit. It is a torture to know that, perhaps, behind this wall she is suffering and he isn’t allowed to even try to levitate some of that pain.

He hopes that this mission will allow for them to find some way of communicating something, anything to one another. Her silence has never been scarier.

He is preparing to sleep. Kurenai lets him hold her at nights, but her mind is elsewhere, under a block. So he is prepared to sleep next to her, hoping somehow that the fact of the closeness of his body is a reminder that he is here with her, and to gain some reassurance for himself - that she is near him, that he at least sees what she is going through, hugs her and thinks that even when he was nineteen and she has forbidden him from seeing her, the distance between them seemed shorter.

He’d taken to visiting Kurenai’s mother in that time, when he was nineteen, pathetically liking the idea of being this way close to her, hoping to catch some news of her, to know of her, to learn her history. He’s been enchanted by that small house, and the visions it supplied about Kurenai’s childhood. Whenever he was there, he wanted to ask Kurenai’s mother for the pictures of Kurenai, but he never did. Later, when he’s asked Kurenai about her childhood pictures, she’s shown him some, most of them taken at the academy, Kurenai has told him that through her childhood they were too poor to afford a camera or anything like that.

“Is there anything in your mother’s house kept since your birth?” - he’s asked in inexcusable naivety. He only wanted to have something that would make little Kurenai real in his head, terribly curious. His own house, apart from the pictures of him since his first days, still has his first toys, and even some of his clothing - his socks, his first overall, his first shoes, his first mittens. Shikamaru’s mother preserved it all in a chest to preserve his smell, which is a bit extreme, in Shikamaru’s opinion, but his mother always argued that he is her first and only child. But those things were a source of marvel even for Shikamaru - it is hard to believe that he’s been small enough to fit those pieces, Shikamaru was only imagining his joy at finding things that would make it easier for him to imagine Kurenai’s first days.

Kurenai answered politically, “I don’t think my mother is one for sentimentality,” but her tone was brisk, and it was very apparent that she didn’t want to discuss it further. He never pressed.

There was something about Kurenai’s relationship with her mother that Shikamaru constantly felt that he couldn't understand. And Kurenai has never tried to explain it to him, and very obviously didn’t like his questions about that topic. But there was a bigger mystery in the face of Kurenai’s mother.

When Shikamaru kept coming to Kurenai’s childhood house, he thought that Kurenai’s mother only didn’t like him distracting her. It was clear from the first sight that she was a weathered woman, who has worked hard all her life. But then, he felt she got used to his presence - one of the days she’s said that the facet was leaking, and so Shikamaru had fixed that, glad to at least this way compensate his unwelcome presence. A couple of weeks later, when he’s tried to place the distance between Kurenai’s home, not wanting to intrude upon her mother, he’s bumped into her on one of the streets. She’s asked him where he had been, and so he returned to visiting her as often as before. She spoke little, often brisk, never afraid to criticize him and his unskilled tinkering within her house. She was a very hard, very lonely lady. Occasionally he wondered if Kurenai’s mother somehow has placed all her happiness into her daughter, constantly wondering how exactly she has raised such daughter as Kurenai - someone so gentle and so kind, whether her relationship with her daughter were the only place she truly showed herself, or if Kurenai simply inherited another nature. Kurenai’s mother hasn’t seemed to be cruel or even bad, in fact she’s seemed to have a very strong sense of morals, very strong sense of decency, the one thing, it seemed, she transferred to Kurenai, but she was a very cold woman. It was hard to imagine her cooing over her first-born daughter.

The mystery of Kurenai’s father never pressed on Shikamaru. Sometimes he wondered if Kurenai has inherited his nature and thus ended up with the wrong parent, but more often than not, he just assumed that Kurenai has repeated her mother’s destiny and was left a fatherless child due to circumstances above all people. He’s always known that Kurenai was born during a war, after all.

It was much and much later, when Mirai has started using her eyes to play with genjutsu, Shikamaru has been so impressed with that genome, that he decided to research it, for Mirai’s sake, also curious about the nature of Mirai and Kurenai’s eyes.

It wasn’t hard to find a book on red-eyed genjutsu-capable ninjas. Heirs of Indra, the book has speculated, and even though the strongest genome is obviously the sharingan, other countries have had families that have similar eyes. Specifically, Land of the Mood had the family that seemed to have the eyes very similar to Kurenai’s.

There was something tugging on Shikamaru’s brain, right there. Land of the Moon. During the war in which Kurenai was born, they were participating in that war.

Shikamaru has placed an order for the book about Land of Moon most famous clans.

While he waited, he’s asked Kurenai, “Your mother wasn’t born in Land of Fire, was she?”

“No, she’s from Land of Tea, I told you we’ve travelled all my childhood.”

Land of Tea. They were participating in that conflict, but they were a small enough country. That war they were fighting opposing Land of Moon, but at the very beginning, they were allies, something Konoha’s education has decided not to place focus on. Land of Tea was one of their oldest, most loyal allies, it did little good for the common villagers to know that their loyalties weren’t all that constant.

Sometimes Shikamaru, especially in the years since he got together with Kurenai, has watched with a sort of amazement at Kurenai’s relationship with her mother. Kurenai, it seemed, was forgiving her mother everything, and never tried to argue back. It was such a sensitive topic for her, and he learned to never raise it, but he wondered if the reason for such docility wasn’t only Kurenai’s fear or weakness in front of her mother, or even her kind and gentle nature, but something else. Shikamaru can’t quite explain how, but hints dropped here and there by Kurenai showed him that she thought her mother was raped by her father, that her mother fled her country in the aftermath of the tragedy, and perhaps, that was the biggest reason for such a patience from Kurenai’s side towards her mother - she looked at her mother and thought that everything she did, her unhappy life was the result of a tragedy that ruined her when she was only seventeen. And Kurenai took it upon herself to atone for her father.

When he receives the book, he finds easily the clan that Kurenai’s father must’ve belonged to. It isn’t hard from there to find the potential father of Kurenai, the clan isn’t too big, there are only two men who were alive during the time of Kurenai’s inception. One of them was fifty-five at the time, and married. An officer with a rank. Another one was seventeen, and raised in Tea by his relatives. When Shikamaru checks he finds that the seventeen-year old one has studied in the same school that Kurenai’s mother had studied at.

Shikamaru sends an information request to Moon, regarding those two. The Moon finds the old files for him. The officer has never stepped a foot in Tea, Shikamaru sees it in his mission sheet. He’s been fighting at the front, in Amegakure, far enough to never be Kurenai’s father, though the words on the paper can lie, missions can be hidden, especially on paper, Shikamaru knows well enough. His nephew and Kurenai’s mother's classmate has been raised in Tea. When he was nineteen he’s married an unnamed woman and had three kids with her. Entire family has died in the most recent conflict, in the Fourth Shinobi War.

The files include their pictures. The picture of the officer must’ve been taken in the later years - he looks near seventy. The second picture makes Shikamaru falter for a second. Not because Kurenai’s biological father looks like her, in fact except for the eyes, he doesn’t, but because he is so much like Mirai. The hair, the smile, the mischief in the eyes - even in the picture it is apparent that he is someone funny, someone easy to laugh, all those wrinkles by the eyes, that he, whoever he’d been, was popular. He looks a lot like Asuma.

Kurenai must’ve inherited her mother’s taste.

Because Shikamaru hasn’t been satisfied then, he also requested the Tea to provide all the files they had on Kurenai’s mother. There wasn’t much, but what had he expected? To learn the entire story from files? Kurenai’s mother’s file only stated her date of birth, her date of enrolment to school, the phone of her guardian, and that later she has relocated to Konoha. Shikamaru checks the guardian’s name, and learns that it is Kurenai’s great-grandmother, she’s died around the time Kurenai was born. He finds nothing on Kurenai’s grandparents, but guesses they must’ve died.

The only thing he has to help him is the picture of Kurenai’s mother attached to the file, she is around seventeen. She is uncannily alike to Kurenai. Shikamaru has seen the strong resemblance even before, but now he understands that the years have stolen greatly from Kurenai’s mother. In this picture he sees Kurenai - same dark wave of hair, same oval of face, only the colour of the eyes is different, but even their form is alike. The emotion is lacking - it is a carefully blank face, taken specifically for the document, and the expression explains nothing.

Shikamaru has thought so much about all the information he has gathered. It wasn’t enough, he knew not to base any theories on such flimsy case, so he couldn’t show it all to Kurenai, he’s seen all the holes.

Besides, he has no explanation, he can’t quite see the picture - so they were classmates, she was beautiful, he was popular. Not to forget she hasn’t had parents, and he was raised in a foreign country, both things he doesn't know the reasons for. Were they friends? Shikamaru thinks not, but maybe his view of Kurenai’s mother is based on who she is now, but back when she was sixteen what was she like? Maybe she was popular. Shikamaru doubts it, though. Shikamaru thinks that Kurenai’s father was a lot like she is - caring and gentle, but he can’t prove it, so it can be discarded. And then the child at seventeen, around the time Kurenai’s mother’s guardian has died, around the time of war sweeping inside that small country. Two years later Kurenai’s father marries another woman, and stays in the foreign to him Tea all his life. Tea is primarily a farming country, and he was a farmer. With his eyes, with his potential for genjutsu, he didn’t fight, unless the war requested it. He doesn’t understand, the past doesn’t come out of the fog.

Was there a tragedy in Kurenai’s mother’s life, hidden somewhere here? It doesn’t show itself in the documents. But Shikamaru trusts that man’s face - he is sure that Kurenai’s father was seventeen at the time of her birth, and he is sure that he isn’t cruel. Still, it’s not enough. Well, it is enough for him, but wouldn’t be enough for Kurenai, who’s spent her life with another theory.

And so he watched how Kurenai has allowed her mother to say anything she wished to her, how she endured her mother’s harsh treatment and cold words, and never said anything. And now he wonders if this is at last the time for him to try to relief Kurenai of something she’s carried all her life - the illusion that her mother is deeply unhappy because she was undeservingly ruined, and in the end, even with Kurenai’s kindness, she died before her time, never free from her traumatic past.

As he lays down and holds her tight to him and thinks and thinks and thinks, he hears something outside the tent, the sound of metal, but it is too late, and the enemies already attack them - the tent goes away under acidic rain that burns both of them before they jump out.

The enemies are hidden, but Kurenai locates and scans them quickly, and sends him, ’Three.’

Kurenai launches into the battle and Shikamaru follows her back, allowing himself to trust Kurenai’s abilities that are supposed to give him time to think the counter attack.

As he is analyzing, Kurenai moves closer and closer to the water, no doubt as a part of the plan of their enemies - they are, after all ninjas of the Land of Waves, and before Shikamaru has the time to explain his plan to Kurenai, she is kicked into the water.

“Kurenai!” - he screams, mind scrambling to think of another plan. He jumps into the river before he thinks everything through.

Coldness comes as a sensation of pain, as a paralyzer. Their enemies are prepared to turn entire water in the river into acid, and before Shikamaru has the time to react, they fold all the seals, and as Shikamaru anticipates the pain, he understands that the enemies are already captured in genjutsu, they are seeing the dying in the river of acid, as he and Kurenai speed and bump away from them.

Shikamaru extends his shadow, easy enough to do in the night, and feels the map of the river, which he transfers to Kurenai’s brain. Now, at least, they will be able to know where the stones ahead of them are, and will be able to dodge them. They both know that they should not leave the river too soon, they need to place the distance between them and the enemies, and the river is the quickest way to do it. Besides, Shikamaru knows that Kurenai uses river’s force to bind the minds of their enemies, so they can’t step out, or she’ll lose the connection to continue genjutsu.

The stay in the river for an hour, swimming by being beaten by it, loosing the feelings of the limbs in it’s’ coldness, until at last Shikamaru guesses they’ve placed enough distance between them and the attackers, and genjutsu has lasted long enough for them to believe it even when they awaken from it.

He extends his shadow to capture Kurenai in it and then drags both of them out of the water. Kurenai is much more exhausted than he is, she, after all, had to keep the enemies’ minds captured.

They come out of the water shivering, their teeth keep shaking. Shikamaru holds Kurenai by her waist and moves them deeper into the forrest. The night only settles more surely over them, giving them the much needed darkness but also freezing them to the bone. Shikamaru barely has enough chakra to create some kind of heat. They need to find a shelter, or even build a fire now, it won’t matter even if they give out their position to their enemies, they are to die of hypothermia before the morning anyway. Beneath the enemies' line, they might compromise their mission and sabotage their village’s secrets, but Konoha will send a rescuing team for them. Shikamaru never was the one to understand the importance of politics. For him, everything is clear - his and Kurenai lives are far more important than their state.

But before he has the time to sit and give up and light a fire, Kurenai says, “It’s not far from here,” as she sends him the thought of the shelter built in Amegakure for Konoha soldiers. Kurenai’s been here before.

By the time they find that small cottage and stumble inside, Shikamaru fears for their fingers and toes, their clothing a dead dripping weight that steals all the heat their bodies make. Inside the four walls, they find a bleak dusty place with little in it, it is just as cold inside as it is outside. But it has a fireplace, and Shikamaru moves immediately to fire it, while Kurenai takes care of covering all the windows and the gaps in the walls. Easiest, for any Konoha soldier, jutsu - to conjure a fire, but the wood is bad and doesn’t take right away. By the time Shikamaru lights the fire, Kurenai comes back with blankets she took from beneath one of the floor board.

They get rid of the wet clothes, and sit in front of the fire covered by dusty, smelly, covered in holes blanket. It might be one of the grandest sensations in Shikamaru’s life. They shiver, but he feels the heat of the fire, the blankets preserve their warmths as they share it between each other.

Shikamaru checks Kurenai’s fingers and toes, and even though they are stiff and white, he feels the chakra flow inside them. He places her hands under his armpits and her feet on his lap. They find their comfort in that strange embrace. Nothing feels, nothing ever felt as good as the warmth enveloping them right now.

Kurenai melts into him the way she hasn’t done in the past month. She is soft. And Shikamaru already knows, but she still spells it out for him, “I feel alright, Shikamaru.”

And he knows it is true. They dodged the death, they are both alive.

 

* * *

 

Shikamaru comes to the house when he knows his father wouldn’t be there. Ino-Shika-Chou tradition as old as the trio existed - to meet on a Friday night in a bar. Shikamaru thinks it is safe to say his father wouldn’t be home til Saturday morning.

He is dreading, he can admit that. His mother always inspired a healthy dose of fear inside him. It is also true for his father, and much alike for the rest of the world, so he’s never been ashamed of that.

Shikamaru can’t quite explain why he wants to see his mother and never his father, only he looked up his father’s schedule - the man did do an odd job or two that Naruto, under Shikamaru’s orders, gave him. Solitary missions, because the old man was as stubborn as a mule. Shikamaru hadn’t done it for his father, per se, but more for his mother’s sake. With them two constantly at home, it is a miracle there still haven’t been a murder.

Shikamaru wonders if today is the day at long last Nara residency will see the blood spilling. Shikamaru doesn’t quite know what his mother would do to him, what her reaction would be to seeing him - his parents have made themselves crystal clear that he is never to step a foot in Nara residency. He is sure that they even changed the will so that he would never receive it, even after their deaths, because if there is one thing his parents know how to do is to be angry.

He takes in the great forrest before the residency. He misses the forrest for Mirai’s sake. He takes her to the woods, but it doesn’t feel quite as the territory here, the one that belongs to his family - the solitude of these woods, the unspoiled by other people nature.

And then from it appears his childhood home - his father made him learn the history of the place, though Shikamaru was rarely impressed by it. In his opinion, it was just on the side of being overwhelming, old stupid thing that was way too important for his ancestors. Besides, just how much maintenance it required… Who would want to live in a place like that? Only people who liked the torture of mind-numbing household duties. In a place this old, something was perpetually broken, something perpetually in need of repairing. Shikamaru wanted to laugh into his parents’ faces when they told him he wouldn’t get that house as if that was a punishment.

He sees his mother through the window, she hasn’t noticed him yet. She is in the kitchen, white flour swirling around her.

Shikamaru thinks about his options - he can make himself seen before he’s entered the house, this way he’ll have a chance to escape in case his mother decides to launch on him. But he enters the house, takes off his shoes and calls out, “I’m home!” the way he was taught to do always by his parents, the habit changing his words, he planned to say, ’Sorry for intrusion,’ the more fitting phrase, but couldn’t say that.

Shikamaru hears his mother moving and knows the route she’ll have to take. Fuck, kitchen has so many dangerous weapons. Before he has the time to panic, his mother is already running towards him.

She is hugging him before he explains anything, the white puff of flour all around them as she bumps into him. The hug is a lot like his mother - painful and hard, but Shikamaru accepts it, and hugs his mother back.

They stand like that for long beats, and then both realize they desperately need to pretend like everything is perfectly normal, and not over-sweep this residency with, god forbid, emotions. Blood spilling the Nara residency can take, but that shit? It’s for other, much dumber people.

“What are you making?” - Shikamaru’s shirt is all covered in sticky dough.

“Apricot dumplings,” - his mother tries to beat the flour off his shirt. He looks unpresentable, so the full house of no one will not respect him, of course.

“That doesn’t sound good. Is it what father likes with his waning palate?”

His mother flashes him a look. Shikamaru likes that she acknowledges that it is too early in their reconciliation phase for her to scream at him, but still lets him know that she’s ready to do it, if he decides to push.

“You liked it when you were a child,” - and before Shikamaru has the time to say anything about life moving in circles, and that old usually end where children start, his mother says, “I think Mirai will like it.”

Which is… Unexpected and quick of his mother. Shikamaru feels the spread of forbidden feelings on the Nara territory. All those years with Kurenai made him soft.

“I’ll invite her.”

“Tell Kurenai to come, too. I’ve made too many.”

Shikamaru sees in his mother’s eyes her refusal to talk anymore of that, and doesn’t say anything.

“How’s father?” - Shikamaru follows her to the kitchen while he sends a text to Kurenai.

“Gone til the morning.”

“We won’t be staying the night, then.”

Shikamaru’s mother looks at him for a long time, and then shrugs, “You have your own place."

 

* * *

 

“Out of your league,” - Shikamaru says confidently. Karui won’t even look at him.

“I know,” - Chouji starts, but Shikamaru interrupts.

“No, you don’t, Chouji. You are literally constantly underestimating yourself and judging yourself too harshly. You are one of two greatest people I know, and literally not a person in this village is out of your league, not Ino, not Naruto or Sasuke, or whoever else. Only Kurenai is way out of your league, but she is out of everyone's. But Karui is definitely out of your league.”

“She is so out of my league.”

Shikamaru hums agreeably in reply.

“I don’t think I even deserve to talk to her. Or look at her.”

“Okay, so now since you know all that to be true, I think you need to know - you are probably the closest person on Earth to deserve Karui, and if she dates anyone else, she is totally mad because there isn’t a single person better than you, so I think you, at least deserve to try.”

Karui is smart, strong, funny, beautiful and sexy, not to mention popular and pleasant to be around with (unlike her brother). It is no wonder that Chouji would fall for her. The only weird thing about it is…

“So, like Naruto is okay with this?” - Shikamaru feels himself being rusty, conservative as if he is his old folks, but the first time Chouji talked to him about Karui, Shikamaru felt absolute terror at the thought that his best friend is cheating on his partner.

“Yeah,” - Chouji shrugs and doesn’t elaborate further.

“So you were always in the open relationship?”

Chouji looks uncomfortable, maybe because he thinks that Shikamaru is judging him.

“You could say so.”

And then Shikamaru decides to leave it all at that. He’s never pried into Chouji’s romantic relationship, and Chouji never pried into whatever he and Kurenai has been doing all those years, even though he’s been, for years, the only person Shikamaru told to about his feelings for Asuma’s widow, so that’s fair. Not like it’s Shikamaru’s deal, anyhow.

 

* * *

 

He and Kurenai are taking the scenic route back home. The lake reflects the red sunset-lit sky. Shikamaru feels the familiar urge to touch touch touch Kurenai, but, for some reasons, in their relationship they both remained uncomfortable with any kind of PDA. He imagines that - if he were to place his hand on Kurenai’s shoulder, she wouldn’t snuggle against him, but rather tense.

So they walk side by side, not touching, but still close.

Mirai sleeps over at Nara. Shikamaru still hasn’t spoken to his father, but his parents seemed to accept Mirai as his sole heir, and so place all their grandparent aspirations and dreams upon her. They see her more than they see him, and that seems fitting, even if weird. Shikamaru is reconnected to his parents through Mirai.

“Don’t overthink it,” - he tells to Kurenai, knowing perfectly well that Kurenai still recreates the talks between her and Mirai these past days.

In Shikamaru’s opinion it is just unfair that Mirai seems as unimpressed with her mother, as both he and Kurenai were with theirs. Kurenai never screams at Mirai, always listens respectfully to all Mirai’s ideas and even allows her daughter to do a lot of what she wants to do, even more than Shikamaru finds reasonable to be allowing. But Kurenai wants to raise her daughter in the atmosphere of letting her do what she wants to do, and make her own choices, with little regard to her small knowledge of the world.

At eleven, it seems a bit early for the rebellious years to start, but of course, Mirai, who’s been a late bloomer about everything, would only have her teen years begin early.

Kurenai has felt this coming, Shikamaru thinks. She’s always said that she and Mirai are simply not clicking, and Shikamaru has known that Kurenai felt insecure about her motherhood abilities, but he only thought that all this was the result of Kurenai undermining her own abilities. Shikamaru thought that she is a great mother. As good in this as she is good in everything she does.

It started with Mirai, saying, rather obnoxiously, Shikamaru would’ve been dead if he talked to his parents in such way, to Kurenai about things big and small, “Oh, Mom, not like you’d know,” “Mom, don’t pretend to care,” to any question Kurenai would ask. Shikamaru has taken a long time a role of mother’s boyfriend and though he did parent Mirai here and there, out of respect to Asuma’s last wish, he never inserted himself between Kurenai and Mirai’s relationship, never offered his thoughts on raising to Kurenai, never tried to negotiate the conflicts between mother and daughter, and all three of them seemed to be comfortable in that arrangement. He thinks that if Mirai had been his daughter, he would’ve surely said something about Mirai minding her tone, but he can’t do that. He only lets himself observe, and hopes to relief Kurenai who has been feeling down due to all these spurs of tensions.

“I think she is right,” - Kurenai sighs, opening herself up in a way that, after all those years, is still rare. Shikamaru knows to fall back and listen instead of interrupting. - “I wanted to give her as much as freedom from me as I could, but I think I instead distanced myself from her."

Shikamaru thinks that maybe all of these isn’t as important as it seems to Kurenai, but then she is the mother of her child. Still, Mirai is only eleven, surely, she needs to simply establish herself away from her mother. Maybe, even the reason isn’t at all deep - just Mirai picking up the talk of the Academy, of her peers. Maybe Mirai has been having a string of bad days, and that was all. Shikamaru is sure that the next week she will once again turn into the blinding ray of sunshine she usually is. Shikamaru thinks that Mirai is trying out some new skin to wear, looking forward to reestablishing herself, recreating herself. A whole sea of reasons that have nothing to do with Kurenai.

He says as much to Kurenai.

She smiles, at long last maybe he’s managed to breach the self-loathing she’s been swimming in these past days, “No, you are probably right. It is quite selfish of me to think that I am the reason for anything inside Mirai, isn’t it?”

And Shikamaru sighs out, thinking that he’ll never reach Kurenai. But it’s alright, she is smiling already.

Shikamaru doesn’t know if what he and Kurenai are doing is a right thing, he’s heard so much about importance of communicating for the sake of relationship, for the sake of love. He’s known and loved Kurenai for twelve years and he still doesn’t feel like he understands her, their communication constantly mismatching, if even there. Sometimes Shikamaru wonders what Kurenai thinks of him and how much of him she understands. It would be so pleasant to imagine that somehow, on the other side, Kurenai is there and she sees him clearly, but Shikamaru knows that she can’t be. He can’t imagine himself through Kurenai’s eyes, though, to imagine just how big the mismatch is. Ino has told him that the entire reason for relationships is to be witnessed by that other person, to have a witness to her own life. It might be true for Ino and for her relationship. She and Sakura are witnessing each other’s lives, as they’d done it for all those years.

Shikamaru knows that if all he wants from Kurenai is for her to be his witness, she might be quite a poor seer to be it, so this can’t be a reason for him. A bit unsatisfying, or so it feels to Shikamaru, to limit this great thing he’s allowed not only to experience, but to achieve happiness in it, to one reason. He doesn’t know his reasons, and reckons he might not even need any of them, those reasons will only create something unnatural out of love that flows so naturally.

The twilight hours descend upon them and, in the hope that the darkness will hide them, Shikamaru risks to touch Kurenai’s hand, tender enough for her to dismiss him, but she allows it, and through the interlaced fingers they hold their hands together. They both smile at each other, embarrassed like this is their first date. Shikamaru thinks that he can’t imagine doing that constantly - this already is too distracting, getting him to feel too lightheaded.

 

* * *

 

The first anniversary of Asuma’s death has established the routine of that day of the years to come. Kurenai, Mirai and Raido visit Asuma’s grave in the early hours. Shikamaru doesn’t know when they go exactly, on this day he and Kurenai, without talking it out, try to ignore each other as much as they can. At one point Kurenai used to stay the two nights at her mother’s, later Shikamaru took it upon himself to sleep in Hokage’s office.

Usually he spends the day with Team 10, a ritual from the first anniversary, too. These days, because Chouji and Ino are dating Naruto and Sakura respectively, Team 7 joins them (Sasuke joins them because he seems to be joined on the hip to his teammates, and seems to be completely immune to the fact that apart from his teammates no one enjoys his company), and Team 8 does, too, because they don’t want to be missing out. It is a stark difference to the first anniversary - the one he, Ino and Chouji got miserably drunk, feeling orphaned, alone, stripped from protection. Now the three of them get the chance to show off their leader - they tell all the stories of Asuma’s life, many of which they learned after his death. Some of the best of them, or the ones that were simply hidden, are about Asuma’s early team.

But when the time comes for them to go to Asuma's grave, only the three of them go there. Other teams give them the chance to be by themselves. Today, as the three of them stand before memorial with Asuma’s name, Shikamaru feels a sort of awe that, somehow, through terrible war, the three of them have managed to survive it. And he can’t shake the feeling that all of that is due to Asuma’s sacrifice. Shikamaru lights the cigarette, the smoke from it entangles in the usual wind of that day. Each year the weather remains same - the day gray, the wind. He and his teammates don’t speak, and they don’t need to - through all their history they know each other perfectly, don’t need to talk to understand one another.

At some point Ino cries, trying to hide it and stifle her whimpers, which does nothing to help, and so Chouji cries, too. Shikamaru risks to touch Chouji’s shoulder, even though he knows it might lower his defences. Asuma was their rock, and Shikamaru has always thought himself to inherit that position from their teacher, and he tries to be strong for his teammates, something the other two do as well.

When the rain starts it saves all of them from the humiliation. In a short time Ino and Chouji leave, both touching his shoulder gently. They always try to give him some time to be alone with Asuma.

His cigarette turns limp in his hands, he can’t smoke anymore.

He just stands before Asuma’s grave. He’s never known how to speak to Asuma, while he lays there, his rational mind protesting against the idea of a fantasy that Asuma might listen. But even if Asuma could listen, what could Shikamaru tell him? _I inherited all the places and positions that rightfully belong to you, I feel like an impostor of your life, I feel like a thief. I feel like I received my life only because you sacrificed yours. I don’t know what would’ve been of my life if you hadn’t died._ Everything he might try to communicate to Asuma would be too cruel. Even if he were to tell Asuma about Kurenai and Mirai - it’d be unfair that he should tell Asuma about that. But the truth is, his and Asuma’s relationship were always free of any kind of guilt or hard feelings, and it remains so even after Asuma’s death. Shikamaru doesn’t feel guilt or shame about his life. Even in front of Asuma. And he thinks that Asuma would understand.

There was a guilt of a survivor, but it was so easy to overcome, because it was so hard to imagine that this guilt is what Asuma would’ve wanted any of them to feel. He was a man fiercely in love with his life, proud to his last breath about all his actions, and he raised them to be just like him in that manner - that the life was only a ripe fruit they should sink their teeth in and eat whole, without guilt, without shame, without embarrassment. They lived, they still are alive - Asuma would’ve been proud of that.

And so, even when Shikamaru is alone with Asuma, he doesn’t speak to him. Not because there is nothing he can tell him, but because the words would only diminish what they know already.

The night settles deeply around him, but Shikamaru barely feels the chill. Kurenai comes and stands near him, quiet as she usually is. This is the first time they visit Asuma’s grave together.

In the moonlight her white skin shines with soft reflective light. She places a hand on his elbow and then bends her head to his shoulder, her body the source of heat under the rain and wind, they stand close to one another, looking at Asuma’s grave.

The words, the questions, the explanation would only confuse them and shame them, Shikamaru thinks. He does, after all those years he still does, want to ask Kurenai - what would it be had Asuma lived? But he doesn’t need the answer, because he has it. And so they stand in silence.

And then the time comes, and somehow, without speaking, they both leave it, leave Asuma’s grave and go home.

When they are at home, Kurenai will move towards him, and touch his lips gently, saying something with it, he answers and opens up. They will breathe into each other, just breathe, soon to kiss and to touch another. He will hold her face in his hands, wanting to bring her closer, to never let her go. They will stay like this forever. But maybe Mirai will distract them instead, she all grown, sitting in the kitchen, and they’d rather join her instead to drink tea and to talk.

And Shikamaru will think that it matters so little that, maybe, they don’t quite understand each other. Maybe, they share the understanding far greater - that this love is important, that it is indescribable, that it is complex and filled with varieties of nuances, combinations of every emotion there is - joy, and humour, and pain, and lust, and jealousy, and happiness, but grief, too. Maybe the reason they don’t quite speak is precisely because of that one understanding - how to express a thing that is so various, contradictory and complex, but with any other medium but silence. At the end, the love turned out to be not so different from life itself, and in life, there is little need in words to define it and limit it therefore, but only to continue living, there is only a need to continue loving, to appreciate the gift of being allowed to experience this love, same appreciation that is there for being allowed to live.

So, there is a kiss, there is daughter of a man who’s raised him, there is their unimportant homey home, and there is the woman he loves.

 

* * *

 

This definitely happened.

 

“Chouji, be very real with me, very real,” - he doesn’t think he wants to know, but he has to, hasn’t he? Worst happens, Shikamaru guesses, at least he’ll know that his surprise will forever be something he’ll hold over his father.

Chouji looks at him and nods, “Yes, yes, Shikamaru that’s true.”

“Oh my God,” - Shikamaru drops his head to the table. - “I can’t believe that. Since the beginning?”

And he thought they actually broke up, he’s had a full-blown existential crisis because of them - kept thinking how it proves that nothing is meant to last, that the importance is not about the end, and that if everything is temporary there’s all more reason to hold on to the present.

Chouji hums in confirmation, and keeps sipping on the straw.

Shikamaru has a terrible realization and raises his head.

“You two decided to date Team 7 and hadn’t thought to invite me?”

Almost like he isn’t a part of their team.

He wonders if they two felt the same sense of betrayal when Shikamaru started hanging more and more with Team 8.

“We aren’t dating Sasuke,” - Chouji crunches his nose. And Kakashi, but that’s obvious. But maybe because Shikamaru is still agitated, Chouji adds, “We did have a plan to get you and Sasuke together, we’d felt quite guilty about leaving you two behind.”

“Well, I guess I’m glad you hadn’t forgotten me,” - Shikamaru rolls his eyes. - “But why?…”

Everything looked nice and proper when they were split into heterosexual units.

“It was really unfair how you were considered to be the greatest disappointment, we needed to follow-up.”

“And saying the truth was unacceptable because?”

“We didn’t want you or Sasuke to feel left out.”

“So Sasuke doesn’t know?” - Shikamaru suddenly understands that he might hold in his hands power much greater than the one Naruto has.

Chouji, seeing his face, panics, “No, Shikamaru, no.”

Oh, fuck yes, he is going to tell Sasuke everything. But before he’ll discuss it with Kurenai. He thinks she’d like to be this surprised.

And then Shikamaru thinks some more, “How the hell did you manage to keep that a secret from him?”

“Well, it added a spark into our relationships, for sure,” - Chouji smiles. That might be actually one of the most impressive portrayals of fine technique of ninjas - how all four of them have managed to be unnoticed by a freaking dude with rinnengan and sharingan. Sasuke can see through dimensions, Shikamaru thinks. A guy can’t see under his nose.

 

* * *

 

“First of all, Sasuke! - Naruto screams out from beneath the rumble of what is left of their home.

Sakura has told him, Sakura has told all of them that he’d be mad, but, no, no one listened to her!

“It’s not even your business! - Naruto continues and Sakura already feel the air itself change. This is it. They are going to die.

Sasuke lunches upon Naruto, and Sakura jumps onto his back to prevent him from murdering the Seventh Hokage. Team 10 have hidden somewhere. Sakura knows that it is all only Shikamaru’s fault, and she does feel mad at him, but she also feels mad about those two.

“Could You Not,” - she punches Sasuke’s back with each word, - “Freaking Control Your Teammate?”

It is fucking apparent that Shikamaru with his schemes and plans would end up creating some shit like that.

Ino screams something back, but Sakura is too busy pounding her fists onto Sasuke’s back to hear her pathetic excuses. It is alright to break some bones, Sakura knows it. Her teammates aren’t made of porcelain. Between her pounds and Naruto’s attacks, Sasuke screams and suddenly he activates freaking Susanoo and throws them out of him.

That’s great. That’s really fucking great.

Sasuke has already captured Naruto in genjutsu and by sounds of it, isn’t the country of fairies that Naruto’s mind is trapped in.

“You!” - he turns to Sakura. It isn’t even a little terrifying, Sakura calms herself down, lying, about to lose control over her bladder. - “You are supposed to be on my side!”

And then he runs towards her with entire freaking purple God all around him.

Sakura thinks Sasuke’s words might even be fair. They both united against Naruto’s stupidity long long time ago and were behind each other. She dodges his first attack, and releases Naruto from his genjutsu.

“Why are you protecting him?” - Sasuke roars. She pushes awakening Naruto out of his way, and stands more firmly on the ground. She places all her chakra into a fist.

“I’m fucking dating him!” - she screams, and runs to meet Sasuke halfway.

They slam into each other - Sakura’s punch breaking ribs in the Susanoo and in Sasuke inside it, her hand screams with pain - it seems like she’s broken all the bones in that hand. Sasuke’s breaking Susanoo and her chakra send them both flying to the other sides of the battlefield. They both smash the wall - Sasuke’s punch into stone eased by fading Susanoo, Sakura immediately sends the healing chakra into her hand and into her broken by the smash spine.

Naruto is already on Sasuke. But, shit, when Sasuke is mad like that, it becomes impossible to control him. Sakura jumps to help. Not even the two of them can handle him.

Sakura is relieved when she feels the familiar presence nearby - Kakashi is exactly what they need to sedate Sasuke.

“What is going on here?” - Kakashi asks them as calmly as if this all is the same as when they were twelve and having the pillow-fight (“DIE, DIE, DIE! - Sakura’s memory suddenly supplies how they used the pillow to beat into each other when they were first assigned together. They were a bit intense as far as twelve-year olds go).

The three of them freeze. Naruto’s hand about to punch Sasuke, Sasuke hand on his neck, squeezing the air out, Sakura has both of them by the hair, trying to pull them apart, and each of them in turn holds her elbow in unforgiving grip, the bruises already forming, and the bones not breaking in her hands only because she sends addition stream of chakra there to strengthen them.

All three of them don’t explain shit. It is usually not needed with Kakashi. Sakura notes Team 10 cowering far out, Kurenai is already there, holding Shikamaru, the first victim of today’s battle. They are as nauseating as they always are. Mirai is nearby, looking excited. Shikamaru was right there when Sasuke exploded, so it’s kind of a miracle he’s alive. Genma is there, too, far out. In fact, they have quite a number of watchers - from the windows of unbroken houses there are villagers who watch all this half terrified, half amused. It’s been some time since the three of them had a good fight.

Maybe even a week.

“Oh, I see, Sasuke learned that the two of you never broke up, but were only hiding the fact that you’re in polyamorous relationship with Chouji and Ino?”

They say nothing, still waiting for his verdict. Sakura thinks that he needs to see that she and Naruto need help sedating Sasuke.

Kakashi grins, and Sakura already knows that this isn’t good. All three of them tense for Kakashi’s next words.

“Took you long enough, huh, Sasuke?” - Kakashi cocks his head.

Sasuke explodes and sends them flying away from him.

As soon as Sakura lands, she screams, “Why would you only decide to infuriate him more, sensei?!” and runs for Kakashi. Meanwhile, Sasuke only roars, “Kakashi!” and runs for him, too. Naruto screams, “Don’t pretend to be smart, Kakashi-sensei!”

The three of them attacking together makes Kakashi’s eyes widen out of fear. This might be the first time Sakura sees their teacher afraid.

They punch all together, their teacher’s feeble tries to protect himself with shield of chakra useless, and the flow of their power sends Kakashi into breaking one wall and only stopping at the next one. The roof falls onto him.

The three of them, breathing out hard, feeling still mad, await for Kakashi to reappear from the rumble. If he died, they will continue their good fight - the fire pounding in them demanding blood.

Their teacher reappears, at first as a shadow, all in dust. As it settles, they notice something, but don’t see enough to be sure until Kakashi wipes the blood and the dust from him.

Entire village watches the sight before them. A child begins to wail. People drop to their knees. Naruto is at once silent. Sasuke mutters, “what the fuck.” Sakura herself feels the need to bow down, find God, pray, feast, atone, cleanse.

Someone cries, maybe even Sakura.

But apart from that noise of nothingness, the animalistic noise of reaction, no one speaks. It is the quietness of a forrest - absent in mind, if not in sound.

Kakashi stands before entire village with his face completely uncovered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading it and supporting!


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